The company claims its Rapid Packaging and Prototype Design (RPPD) product negates the need for more traditional testing methods – which, the firm says, are “hampered” by having to rely on measurements of consumers’ biophysical responses or the articulated responses they give in surveys or focus groups.

“Package design is gaining ground as one of the most critical components of brand marketing,” said A. K. Pradeep, NeuroFocus’s CEO. “It’s a $100 billion-plus industry that until now has had to rely on research techniques that are not only far less accurate than neurological testing, but more time-consuming and expensive as well.”

RPPD incorporates an element called POP Finder (or Packaging Opportunity Finder) which is based on a phenonmenon the company refers to as the “pop-out factor”: the impact on the subconscious mind that an image can produce when it is made to stand out from its environment.

Applied to package designs, NeuroFocus said, the POP Finder aims to identify which individual elements of a package design elicit the most powerful “pop-out” response.

The research incoporates EEG sensors to monitor brainwave activity, as well as eye-tracking and galvanic skin response measurements.