Choosing what shirt to buy can be an overwhelming decision to make for some customers. This is why Japanese clothing brand Uniqlo decided to apply a technique called neuromarketing to help their customers decide.
In Sydney, Uniqlo offered to assess their customers' current mood through neuroscience technology using a system called UMood. The clothing brand claims that the UMood is the first of its kind.
The process is simple: the customer wears a headset that determines brain patterns using a single sensor. A video that shows seconds-long clips of 10 different emotions ranging from "dandy" to "stormy" plays on the screen in front of the customer.
The headset, an electroencephalography (EEG) device, is designed by a Japanese company called Dentsu Science Jam that studies how brain signal processing can be applied for marketing and other platforms. The sensor is a commercially-designed biosensor made by NeuroSky.
"Essentially you've got a system that is picking brain electrical activity, and it's doing that from a single sensor at the front of someone's head," said Phil Harris, a consumer neuroscientist.
The device looks into five factors in order to acquire accurate assessments. These factors are drowsiness, concentration, interest, like and stress. Through these factors, the device measures the person's reactions on a range of stimuli played on screen.
The photos shown on screen were of rippling waves, a person blowing confetti, sleepy kittens, a dog, a stormy day in the city and a man standing on top of a mountain.
The result is then analyzed by an algorithm developed by Dentsu Science Jam. Afterwards, matched suggestions to what shirt the person should purchase will be displayed.
For the algorithm, Uniqlo surveyed and recorded responses of several people to over 600 of their shirts. The information was used to determine the average mood that people felt when looking at one.
One customer's experience involved being recommended with geeky shirts with Superman and The Avengers on it. After showing suggestions, UMood also takes note of what the customer's reaction to the matched shirts is, and then decides on the perfect match.
Australian comedian Ben Law also tried out the UMood. He described the system as the "Tinder for shirts."
Tracy Lang, marketing director of Uniqlo Australia, hinted that the brand may take UMood to different parts of the world if the platform becomes successful in Sydney and Melbourne.
