Business marketing and neuroscience together create cutting-edge research at Utah Valley University. The Sales and Marketing Applied Research Test Lab (SMARTLab) provides a unique approach to understanding and predicting shopper behavior. It’s captured the attention and business of companies like Adobe, Overstock, and Vivint. It’s also earned UVU a Best of State for Best Analytical Lab for the fifth year in a row.

“We are sought out as thought leaders,” said Dale Jolley, SMARTLab director. “This is the most advanced cutting-edge marketing research you can do, and this is what our students learn.”

The lab merges science with business research by utilizing eye tracking, electroencephalography (EEG), and galvanic skin response (GSR) to generate non-biased data. Research participants are selected according to the demographics requested by a company, faculty, or students to test products, advertising campaigns, websites, and commercials.

“We put it through what we call eye tracking, and it tells us where people are looking or not looking at the different stimuli. We can also tell you what emotional response is to what they are seeing or feeling. The electroencephalography goes on your head, and it has sensors that show me when you are looking at something how hard your brain is working. Is it too hard or not hard enough? We can tell if you are really engaged, excited, or bored,” Jolley said.

Researchers also collect data on heart rate and skin perspiration. The answers provide a clear picture of response, which is then followed up with survey questions about why the response occurred. Jolley says it is more accurate and less biased than other methods of marketing research such as focus groups and surveys.

Faculty and students are encouraged to use the lab as a free resource for research projects, but demand for services from businesses also keeps Jolley and his team busy. The lab is expanding in the new Keller Business Building with additional service and a greater number of student employees who participate in data collection.

“I got to have hands-on experience for almost my entire time at UVU working with local and national businesses, so it really helped me bring everything into reality with what I was learning in class,” said Josh Groves, a UVU graduate, now working on his Ph.D. at Washington State University. “It was a huge value to me as a student.”

Rebekah Wadsworth, also a recent UVU MBA graduate, says the SMARTLab helped her recognize the human element of doing business and marketing. It also created awareness that even industry giants are looking for better ways to communicate.

“To see corporations that have been doing things for decades get excited about looking for ways to change what they have been doing, which was innovative of them, was interesting. I thought it was kind of cool that we have that resource to provide to them,” she said.

Jolley says other universities and individuals in the private sector are interested in re-creating UVU’s SMARTLab, but for now, it stands alone as an innovative and unique approach to marketing research. The five straight Best of State Awards as an analytical lab definitely punctuate that the approach is working.