Understanding consumer behaviour

What people say they do and what they actually do are often not the same. Analysing what they are looking at is one way of investigating consumers' attention to factors such as food appearance, packaging design, on-pack messages and/or media communication. At Campden BRI we use a fixed eye tracking system to monitor and measure 'fixations' in response to stimuli shown on a high resolution screen.

Eye tracking can be used as a stand alone application or in combination with other methods, including qualitative and quantitative research approaches, to better understand the influences on consumer choices. Projects are custom built to meet clients' needs, which include for example evaluating the effectiveness of different designs in terms of product visibility and "shelf stand-out", duration of attention, recall and engagement, as well as attitudinal measures and demographics.

Peter Burgess, Head of Consumer and Sensory Science, explains how it works:

"The consumer sits at a computer screen where low levels of infra red light are shone on to their face from emitters located at the base of the screen. A sensor bar containing high resolution digital cameras captures that reflected by the consumer's eyes. Analysis software determines where each eye was looking at a rate of 50 times per second.The system reports the data in a variety of ways - including 'heat' maps, which highlight the areas that received the most attention, 'gaze' plots, which illustrate how a consumer navigated their way through the visual stimuli, and tabulated data."

Contact: Peter Burgess
+44(0)1386 842122
peter.burgess@campdenbri.co.uk