That is why Werner van Zyl, a BComHons (Marketing Management) graduate from the Department of Marketing Management, returned to his alma mater to give a talk to the third year Strategic Marketing students on 7 August 2013. Werner is currently working at Neuromind and his field of expertise is neuromarketing, which combines neuroscience and psychology to better understand consumer behaviour. Werner discussed how customers make decisions and how marketers can make their products more noticeable without having to change the product itself. For example, there is evidence that people are non-consciously influenced by what products are called. Neoromarketing is thus looking towards mental processes to satisfy customer needs better. For more information on neuromarketing, read the article “Customer needs: Thinking, fast and slow” written by Werner van Zyl.

In 2008, a team of scientists in Germany published a study about how the brain unconsciously prepares decisions. The research found that it was possible to predict from people’s brain signals which option they would choose seven seconds before they consciously made their decision. Read more about this study.