Of all the negative feedback consumers might offer about a particular product, a new facility at the Schulich School of Business at York University is aiming to prevent the one that points most directly to senior leadership issues: How can some things that are so bad ever get launched in the first place?
Earlier this year, the university began setting up equipment that can scan the human retina, for example, and monitor other physiological effects that will help researchers access how consumers feel about the design and other aspects of various goods. This facility, which Schulich will formally announce on Monday, will now be home to The Noesis Innovation, Design, and Consumption Laboratory, lead by Theodore J. Noseworthy, an associate professor of marketing and the Canada Research Chair in Entrepreneurial Innovation and the Public Good.
The Noesis Lab has been at Schulich for about two years, Noseworthy said, but the new equipment will open up considerably more opportunities for brands who want to partner with the institution to pursue more difficult areas of market testing and research. However it could also serve as a way to have a constructive dialogue between business and academic about where neuroscience and other tools should really be factored into a marketing or R&D strategy. As with any kind of technology, Noseworthy told Marketing there’s a big difference between having a well-developed plan and merely investing in brain scanning because it appears cutting-edge.
“You realize very quickly many of these professionals do not know what this stuff does or what are the limitations of it,” he said. “In many cases what they’re showing (for their efforts) is nothing.”
Instead, the Noesis Lab team will set up experiments and projects that help brands increase adoption rates for their products, for example, by identifying earlier on how well a particular look and feel will arouse consumers in some way. Given how competitive some industries are and with shorter time horizons to get things out, the lab may also help ensure goods don’t get released with bugs or errors of some kind.
“Particularly in Canada, market testing is seen as costly, expensive,” Noseworthy said, adding that personal biases also play a role. “Oftentimes individuals get married to their ideas — they can’t see why it couldn’t work and start to jump some of the gates.”
The Noesis Lab has often been approached for troubleshooting in the past, Noseworthy said, but that’s less interesting to his team than exploring an interesting idea from the outset.
“We want to be involved in that initial concept identification stage where you believe you have something, and you want to do, will consumers want it?”
Noseworthy said the Noesis Lab could not only help train the next generation of PhDs, but people who want to become entrepreneurs, and create links with the private sector that might not normally think of looking to academia for advice.
Though nothing’s been announced, Schulich is in discussions with several brands about working with the Noesis Lab, which is currently affiliated with 22 researchers and students across many disciplines at the Schulich School of Business; the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University, Schulich’s partner school for the Kellogg-Schulich Executive MBA; Queen’s University and Western University.
