A Keele University Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project will use neuroscience to develop marketing strategies with a local IT consultancy.

Dr Adam Byrne, a neuroscience graduate, is carrying out a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project with risual, an IT consultancy based in Stafford, and is helping them to deliver new sales and marketing approaches based on neuroscientific research.

KTP is Europe’s leading programme helping businesses to improve their competitiveness by enabling companies to work with higher education or research and technology organisations to obtain knowledge, technology or skills which they consider to be of strategic competitive importance. The UK-wide programme is overseen by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, and supported by 16 other public sector funding organisations.

Dr Byrne will be supported by Dr Colin Rigby from Keele Business School, and Professor Nicky Edelstyn from Keele’s School of Psychology. They will use neuroscience techniques to monitor people’s reactions to marketing activities, in order to improve risual’s own marketing strategies.

Dr Byrne will review existing neuromarketing research during the first phase of the project and will use this to inform risual’s sales and marketing processes. He will then go on to design specific experiments which will provide the company with more insights into the effectiveness of individual marketing activities, helping to shape their future strategy.

Neuromarketing is a concept which uses physiological and neural signals to gain insight into customers' motivations, preferences, and decisions, which can ultimately help inform creative advertising, product development, pricing, and other marketing areas.

Dr Byrne said: “This is an exciting opportunity to work alongside Keele University and risual to develop our collective knowledge-base and produce meaningful real-world impacts of neuroscience research. I am confident that this project will prove useful for both sides and will produce some very interesting results.”

Grace Remiarz, Marketing Manager at risual, said: “We are delighted to be working alongside Keele University on this KTP project. risual are renowned for continuous improvement, our passion is learning best practice and gaining new skills and knowledge to provide our customers with world-class services. This project will help us grow, learn more about our clients to better support their organisation goals and deliver impact.”

Dr Colin Rigby at Keele University said: “We are excited to be working with such an entrepreneurial company who understand the power of research and how it is an investment in their future. We are expecting to generate significant returns in terms of new products and services to their markets.”