Editor’s note: the following column was first published in the Green Book Blog

Eye Tracking Beyond Heat Maps

Eye tracking delivers important insights about consumer attention: what people are looking at or what draws their attention and for how long. From this data, direct comparisons can be made about how competitive brands draw attention in stores, on desktops or mobile devices. The same technology is used to monitor, record and analyze shopper behavior to understand what visual cues might trigger someone to select an item off of a shelf in a store or engage with a social media post by liking or favoriting.

Simply, the eyes don’t lie. Eye-tracking metrics does not rely on consumer’s to remember what they saw or what they did. There is a video recording exactly that. And while memory plays a big role in shaping consumer opinion about media, brands and retailors, the things that are not remembered consciously are also stored in the brain and can influence perceptions of the world around us.

As new technology emerges or older technology becomes more accessible to marketers, researchers and brands, pairing eye tracking with these new ways to measure and understand consumer behavior creates am environment where we can even better understand the subconscious and reactive nature of how consumers move through the world.

(Read the rest on the Green Book Blog)

Tags: Consumer BehaviorExperiencing SelfEye TrackingFacial CodingPupil DilationShopper ResearchTrends