Eye Tracking Marketing Research

This is probably one of my favorite topics. The amazing insight that can be gleaned from this kind of technology is amazing and the field is evolving rapidly. Eye-tracking technology provides immediate and accurate results as to what your consumers are looking at when they see your print ad, package design, direct mail, outdoor ad, POS displays, websites, and even TV Commercials. Essentially, your package designs or marketing concept is placed on a specialized computer screen in front of the respondent who then views the material. As the respondents view your advertising concept or package redesign the computer tracks and records where they look and for how long. When it is all said and done you can get reports like the one above telling you;

- The real time scan path (or eye movement) and areas of focus for your concept.

- Static plots illustrating where the respondent looked, in what order, and for how long.

- What the respondents noticed, didn’t notice and most peaked their interest.

Some of the companies that are using this type of technology have become really innovative and can create a simulated shopping environment and track how consumers shop their product category. The people at Perception Research Services have being involved with this technology for some time and are the packaging assessment leaders using this technology for the CPG industry. Where do they get this technology? LC Technologies out of Virginia have been developing this product for 17 years and continues to develop new products. Another platform for this kind of technology is a head-mounted unit that can do the same thing but is much more obtrusive for the respondent and as such struggles to simulate a real shopping experience as well as the other technology.

Roel Vertegaal, Associate Professor in Human-Computer Interaction, at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario has developed an innovative product with a much friendlier price tag and no cumbersome calibrating like its counterparts. I visited with Roel who explained that one of the many uses for their current product is to determine if, who, and for how long consumers are paying attention to the in-store TV monitors in many of today’s big retailers. They also recently wrapped up some research that showed the measurements of the product to be extremely accurate. Roel also mentioned that they will be coming out with another product in the not-to-distant future that will expand the capabilities of this type of measurement further. I told you this was awesome!

This is cool! Where can I learn more?

News about Roel's Xuuk
Roel Vertegaal
Xuuk
MARC Research
Perception Research Services