Neuroscience-Powered Retail Innovation: The Why, and Why Not, of Buy

Why do consumers browse? What makes them pause and consider? What makes them buy? This is the retail puzzle Walmart, Target, Costco, Amazon.com (to name a few!!) work so hard to solve. The puzzle remains equally complicated in online digital storefronts and brick-and-mortar stores spread across the world.

How can you anticipate and articulate the consumer’s unarticulated needs? The winners in today’s rapidly evolving retail landscape are not only utilizing predictive generative artificial intelligence to understand what consumers want, but anticipating needs before consumers themselves even know about them.

The consumer of today is a multisensory hedonist, seeking stimulation from and for all their senses. The most successful brands are those that tap into the profound connection between multisensorial perceptive needs and consumer behavior.

Recent advances in GenAI and neuroscience are enabling retailers to delve deeper into the nonconscious mind — where 95 percent of brain activity occurs — to uncover previously inaccessible insights into these connections. The most successful innovations are driven through this emergent blend of applied neuroscience and GenAI.

Currently, the conscious brain is assaulted in the retail aisle by the volume of quantitative and descriptive verbal information screamed by each product. In response, consumers navigate this harsh terrain using emotional cues, breadcrumbs, or simple-to-understand metrics. Whether it’s megapixels for a camera, gigahertz for a computer, or even the number of lenses a phone has, the consumer’s brain has a single request: make it easy for me or I will use price to differentiate.

By analyzing vast amounts of sensory data, such as the scents, sounds and visuals that resonate with consumers, then applying neuroscience-based GenAI, companies can craft products and experiences that connect on a deeper emotional level and create cues and breadcrumbs consumers will naturally love to follow.

This approach goes beyond traditional market research by exploring the memory structures that shape consumer preferences and behaviors, leading to innovations that are not only relevant but deeply personal. For instance, imagine developing a fragrance that captures the essence of a consumer’s daily experiences in a bustling city like New York, or creating a new flavor that enhances a familiar beverage in unexpected ways. These innovations are not just products; they're experiences that evoke emotion, build loyalty, and differentiate brands in a crowded marketplace.

If not enough consumers feel an overwhelming and compelling desire to acquire and experience the sheer joy of the product, all effort in creating it is wasted. Nurturing these inclinations and impulses in such a complex market requires drawing on the neuroscience of desire. Our conscious and unconscious brains constantly assess if we want things and how much we want them. Measuring and designing product features, product messaging, and product presentations in retail aisles to drip with desire is becoming the focus of modern GenAI algorithms.

This multisensory and consumer brain-centric approach transforms GenAI from “GenericAI” to true generative AI. This transformation is not about replacing human creativity with technology but rather about enhancing and empowering it. By placing consumer neuroscience at the heart of it all, we make GenAI intrinsically consumer-centric and anthropocentric.

The idea of leveraging the unconscious mind in retail isn’t new. Price, promotion, and all of trade spend are centered around the nonconscious perception of a “good deal.” Finding the price point and the associated promotion that speaks to the consumer’s nonconscious perception of value has been a winning formula for faster, larger and more frequent transactions and increased trips to the store — be it brick-and-mortar or digital — for decades. As the retail industry continues to evolve, those who embrace the integration of the neuroscience of the nonconscious into their innovation strategies will be the ones leading the way and setting new standards for how brands connect with their customers.

Retail is on the verge of a transformative revolution. The forever online, forever informed, forever influenced consumer is ready for a real experience, not just a transaction. Neuroscience-powered GenAI enables retailers to connect with this brilliant consumer, who will only give them their undivided attention for a millisecond.

Dr. A. K. Pradeep is the founder and CEO of sensori.AI. He is one of the world’s leading experts on applied neuroscience and artificial intelligence.