Biometrics: The Next Marketing Frontier
Your Body, Your Identity
With the prevalence of science fiction in today’s entertainment landscape, the word “biometrics” has become part of society’s pop culture lexicon. We’ve all witnessed movie scenes in which scientists or doctors gain access to top-secret facilities by use of retinal scanners or hand-recognition software. However, biometric identification is already widely used—no spaceships or robots required. In fact, biometrics are simply defined as body measurements or calculations used to identify people.
One of the most recognizable forms of biometric identification is fingerprint analysis. If you own an iPhone 5S or later, you most likely use biometrics every day through Apple’s Touch ID feature. If you don’t own a phone with Touch ID or another fingerprint-scanning security option, the feature essentially replaces numerical passcodes. Instead of entering, say, a four-digit passcode on a phone’s unlock screen, users can gain access to their phones by placing a finger on the home button. Touch ID and similar security features rely on everyone’s unique set of fingerprints to identify each phone user.
Of course, biometrics aren’t a new phenomenon—the criminal justice system has fingerprinted people with ink and paper for ages. What’s new is the popularity and success of biometrics. Ever since Apple introduced its Touch ID feature, companies have been vying for biometric technology. For example, Canadian biometrics company Nymi has developed a wearable band that confirms an individual’s identity through heartbeat. Nymi’s HeartID, as it’s called, can be used for authorizing credit card transactions, gaining elevator or building access, and a host of other security events. The Nymi Band and technology like it ultimately simplify the authentication process so that employees aren’t inundated with passcodes, keycards, and security apps.
Although biometric development is largely concerned with security, a significant facet of biometrics is market research. Imagine working for a company and being able to gain important insight from your customers through biometric identification. This scenario already exists. Firms such as InterQ specialize in biometric market research to provide clients with customer usability data.
Essentially, the process of biometric market research entails recruiting a sample of individuals to a focus group facility, where they’ll wear skin, eye, or other sensors that record physiological responses. These responses are typically recorded when the study participants browse a website, use an app, or interact with a product in some other way. In addition, researchers will interview participants to gather emotional data that complements any physiological findings.
These studies provide another layer of user experience data that more traditional market research tactics cannot replicate. It’s still important to know customers’ demographic data or their overall purchasing habits, but the ability to, say, determine how much time a person spends looking at certain parts of a webpage is truly groundbreaking.
Biometric market research isn’t a marketing standard by any means—the technology is nascent, and the costs are prohibitive for most businesses. However, as companies continue to personalize their customer interactions, biometrics will be paramount in understanding customer behavior on a much more microscopic level. With biometric marketing, customer emotions exist in the foreground. Companies can offer services specifically tailored to a customer’s emotional state, whether the customer is choosing a movie to watch at the theater or making an in-app purchase on a mobile game. Biometrics can turn marketing on its head with just a heartbeat.
