scholarly journals Picking Your Brains: Where and How Neuroscience Tools Can Enhance Marketing Research

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Letizia Alvino ◽  
Luigi Pavone ◽  
Abhishta Abhishta ◽  
Henry Robben

The use of neuroscience tools to study consumer behavior and the decision making process in marketing has improved our understanding of cognitive, neuronal, and emotional mechanisms related to marketing-relevant behavior. However, knowledge about neuroscience tools that are used in consumer neuroscience research is scattered. In this article, we present the results of a literature review that aims to provide an overview of the available consumer neuroscience tools and classifies them according to their characteristics. We analyse a total of 219 full-texts in the area of consumer neuroscience. Our findings suggest that there are seven tools that are currently used in consumer neuroscience research. In particular, electroencephalography (EEG) and eye tracking (ET) are the most commonly used tools in the field. We also find that consumer neuroscience tools are used to study consumer preferences and behaviors in different marketing domains such as advertising, branding, online experience, pricing, product development and product experience. Finally, we identify two ready-to-use platforms, namely iMotions and GRAIL that can help in integrating the measurements of different consumer neuroscience tools simultaneously. Measuring brain activity and physiological responses on a common platform could help by (1) reducing time and costs for experiments and (2) linking cognitive and emotional aspects with neuronal processes. Overall, this article provides relevant input in setting directions for future research and for business applications in consumer neuroscience. We hope that this study will provide help to researchers and practitioners in identifying available, non-invasive and useful tools to study consumer behavior.

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 1149-1170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Letizia Alvino ◽  
Rob van der Lubbe ◽  
Reinoud A.M. Joosten ◽  
Efthymios Constantinides

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess whether or not electroencephalography (EEG) provides a valuable and substantial contribution to the prediction of consumer behaviour and their preferences during product consumption. In this study, the authors especially focus on individual preferences during a wine tasting experience. Design/methodology/approach A consumer neuroscience experiment was carried out with 26 participants that evaluated different red wines while their brain activity was recorded with EEG. A within-subjects design was employed and the experiment was carried out in two sessions. All participants took part in a blind taste session (no label session), in which information about the wine was not disclosed, and a normal taste session (label session), during which the bottle and its label were visible. Findings The findings suggest that EEG is a useful tool to study brain activity during product experience. EEG has high temporal resolution, low costs, small dimensions and superior manoeuvrability compared to other consumer neuroscience tools. However, it is noticed that there is a lack of solid theoretical background regarding brain areas (e.g. frontal cortex) and brain activity (e.g. brain waves) related to consumer preferences during product experience. This lack of knowledge causes several difficulties in replicating and validating the findings of other consumer neuroscience experiments for studying consumer behaviour. Originality/value The experiment presented in this paper is an exploratory study. It provides insights into the possible contribution of EEG data to the prediction of consumer behaviour during product experience.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Bazzani ◽  
Silvio Ravaioli ◽  
Leopoldo Trieste ◽  
Ugo Faraguna ◽  
Giuseppe Turchetti

Background: In the past decade, marketing studies have greatly benefited from the adoption of neuroscience techniques to explore conscious and unconscious drivers of consumer behavior. Electroencephalography (EEG) is one of the most frequently applied neuroscientific techniques for marketing studies, thanks to its low cost and high temporal resolution.Objective: We present an overview of EEG applications in consumer neuroscience. The aim of this review is to facilitate future research and to highlight reliable approaches for deriving research and managerial implications.Method: We conducted a systematic review by querying five databases for the titles of articles published up to June 2020 with the terms [EEG] AND [neuromarketing] OR [consumer neuroscience].Results: We screened 264 abstracts and analyzed 113 articles, classified based on research topics (e.g., product characteristics, pricing, advertising attention and memorization, rational, and emotional messages) and characteristics of the experimental design (tasks, stimuli, participants, additional techniques).Conclusions: This review highlights the main applications of EEG to consumer neuroscience research and suggests several ways EEG technique can complement traditional experimental paradigms. Further research areas, including consumer profiling and social consumer neuroscience, have not been sufficiently explored yet and would benefit from EEG techniques to address unanswered questions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-91
Author(s):  
Arash Kamangar

The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic literature review of 26 papers in which an eye tracker has been used to analyse how e-commerce websites can impact customers' behaviour. Most journal articles included in the literature on consumer neuroscience only provide a summary of the actual functions of neuroscience techniques. There are no reviews of studies that focus on the use of an eye tracker on e-commerce websites in either the consumer neuroscience or marketing research literature. The findings show that websites affect customers differently according to variables such as age, gender, nationality, etc., so there is a need to make changes in how the website is designed, depending on the types of users and audiences of the websites. This review article discusses limitations and suggestions for future research as well as detailing the theoretical and practical implications for neuromarketing.


2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 66-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meng-Hsien (Jenny) Lin ◽  
Samantha N.N. Cross ◽  
William J. Jones ◽  
Terry L. Childers

Purpose This paper aims to review past papers focused on understanding consumer-related topics in marketing and related interdisciplinary fields to demonstrate the applications of electroencephalogram (EEG) in consumer neuroscience. Design/methodology/approach In addition to the review of papers using EEG to study consumer cognitive processes, the authors also discuss relevant decisions and considerations in conducting event-related potential (ERP) studies. Further, a framework proposed by Plassmann et al. (2015) was used to discuss the applications of EEG in marketing research from papers reviewed. Findings This paper successfully used Plassmann et al.’s (2015) framework to discuss five applications of neuroscience to marketing research. A review of growing EEG studies in the field of marketing and other interdisciplinary fields reveals the advantages and potential of using EEG in combination with other methods. This calls for more research using such methods. Research limitations/implications A technical overview of ERP-related terminology provides researchers with a background for understanding and reviewing ERP studies. A discussion of method-related considerations and decisions provides marketing researchers with an introduction to the method and refers readers to relevant literature. Practical implications The marketing industry has been quick to adopt cutting edge technology, including EEG, to understand and predict consumer behavior for the purpose of improving marketing practices. This paper connects the academic and practitioner spheres by presenting past and potential EEG research that can be translatable to the marketing industry. Originality/value The authors review past literature on the use of EEG to study consumer-related topics in marketing and interdisciplinary fields, to demonstrate its advantages over-traditional methods in studying consumer-relevant behaviors. To foster increasing use of EEG in consumer neuroscience research, the authors further provide technical and marketing-specific considerations for both academic and market researchers. This paper is one of the first to review past EEG papers and provide methodological background insights for marketing researchers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1812
Author(s):  
Gratiela Dana Boca

The article explores consumer behavior in the context of sustainable consumption and the changes related to healthy food that have occurred during the pandemic. The study seeks to identify the factors that influenced consumer behavior on the consumption of fruits and vegetables. For this purpose, a questionnaire was applied to a sample of 1230 people from Maramures County, Romania. This study evaluates consumer behavior and attitudes on sustainable healthy food consumption; determining factors of consumer behavior are established by the needs, knowledge, selection of quality products, and the degree of culture and education in health diet issues. The study also presents a specific classification for fruits and vegetables in terms of consumer preferences and the clustering of local consumers by their interest in healthy food habits according to consumer culture, consumer loyalty, consumer needs, and consumer knowledge. In this study, it was revealed that consumer behavior consumption is not influenced by age, gender, or education. As a result of the correlation analysis, a positive relation was identified between the consumer preference, consumer attitude, and consumer behavior variables. The results of this study offer practical solutions and directions for future research on redesigning sustainable development of local, traditional foods. The new trend focuses on brand offerings and consumer needs for quality food and shows the consumer’s ethnocentrism and orientation for practical solutions.


Author(s):  
Katarína Neomániová ◽  
Jakub Berčík ◽  
Anka Pavelka

Traditional methods of conducting consumer behavior do not provide enough detailed information and therefore the paper aimed to demonstrate the use of consumer neuroscience when examining a selected product policy tool by using biometric methods to identify emotions and subjective consumer preferences. Consumer neuroscience tools provide valuable information to decide on the success of the company in the future, so we consider it as essential to inform entrepreneurs and subjects alike about this modern way of studying consumer behavior. The subject of the research was the original logo of the selected company and the design of three new logo variants that were created using the online graphical tool. Primary data collection was realized under laboratory conditions using the Eye Tracker and Face Reader. Overall, based on the results of our research, we rated the proposal no. 1 as the best one because it kept the views of respondents for the longest time and each respondent looked back at this color combination. The same results were confirmed as well by heat maps. The new logo found for the selected company, however, is recommended for further testing, such as AB testing involving consumer neuroscience tools, to verify the validity of the research undertaken.


2009 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 191-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzannah K. Helps ◽  
Samantha J. Broyd ◽  
Christopher J. James ◽  
Anke Karl ◽  
Edmund J. S. Sonuga-Barke

Background: The default mode interference hypothesis ( Sonuga-Barke & Castellanos, 2007 ) predicts (1) the attenuation of very low frequency oscillations (VLFO; e.g., .05 Hz) in brain activity within the default mode network during the transition from rest to task, and (2) that failures to attenuate in this way will lead to an increased likelihood of periodic attention lapses that are synchronized to the VLFO pattern. Here, we tested these predictions using DC-EEG recordings within and outside of a previously identified network of electrode locations hypothesized to reflect DMN activity (i.e., S3 network; Helps et al., 2008 ). Method: 24 young adults (mean age 22.3 years; 8 male), sampled to include a wide range of ADHD symptoms, took part in a study of rest to task transitions. Two conditions were compared: 5 min of rest (eyes open) and a 10-min simple 2-choice RT task with a relatively high sampling rate (ISI 1 s). DC-EEG was recorded during both conditions, and the low-frequency spectrum was decomposed and measures of the power within specific bands extracted. Results: Shift from rest to task led to an attenuation of VLFO activity within the S3 network which was inversely associated with ADHD symptoms. RT during task also showed a VLFO signature. During task there was a small but significant degree of synchronization between EEG and RT in the VLFO band. Attenuators showed a lower degree of synchrony than nonattenuators. Discussion: The results provide some initial EEG-based support for the default mode interference hypothesis and suggest that failure to attenuate VLFO in the S3 network is associated with higher synchrony between low-frequency brain activity and RT fluctuations during a simple RT task. Although significant, the effects were small and future research should employ tasks with a higher sampling rate to increase the possibility of extracting robust and stable signals.


Author(s):  
Endy Gunanto ◽  
Yenni Kurnia Gusti

In this article we present a conceptual of the effect of cross culture on consumer behavior incorporating the impact of globalization. This conceptual idea shows that culture inûuences various domains of consumer behavior directly as well as through international organization to implement marketing strategy. The conceptual identify several factors such as norm and value in the community, several variables and also depicts the impact of other environmental factors and marketing strategy elements on consumer behavior. We also identify categories of consumer culture orientation resulting from globalization. Highlights of each of the several other articles included in this special issue in Asia region. We conclude with the contributions of the articles in terms of the consumer cultural orientations and identify directions for future research.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Burns ◽  
Lianne N. Barnes ◽  
Ian A. McCulloh ◽  
Munqith M. Dagher ◽  
Emily B. Falk ◽  
...  

The large majority of social neuroscience research uses WEIRD populations – participants from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic locations. This makes it difficult to claim whether neuropsychological functions are universal or culture specific. In this study, we demonstrate one approach to addressing the imbalance by using portable neuroscience equipment in a study of persuasion conducted in Jordan with an Arabic-speaking sample. Participants were shown persuasive videos on various health and safety topics while their brain activity was measured using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Self-reported persuasiveness ratings for each video were then recorded. Consistent with previous research conducted with American subjects, this work found that activity in the dorsomedial and ventromedial prefrontal cortex predicted how persuasive participants found the videos and how much they intended to engage in the messages’ endorsed behaviors. Further, activity in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex was associated with persuasiveness ratings, but only in participants for whom the message was personally relevant. Implications for these results on the understanding of the brain basis of persuasion and on future directions for neuroimaging in diverse populations are discussed.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Mow ◽  
Arti Gandhi ◽  
Daniel Fulford

Decreased social functioning and high levels of loneliness and social isolation are common in schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), contributing to reduced quality of life. One key contributor to social impairment is low social motivation, which may stem from aberrant neural processing of socially rewarding or punishing stimuli. To summarize research on the neurobiology of social motivation in SSD, we performed a systematic literature review of neuroimaging studies involving the presentation of social stimuli intended to elicit feelings of reward and/or punishment. Across 11 studies meeting criteria, people with SSD demonstrated weaker modulation of brain activity in regions within a proposed social interaction network, including prefrontal, cingulate, and striatal regions, as well as the amygdala and insula. Firm conclusions regarding neural differences in SSD in these regions, as well as connections within networks, are limited due to conceptual and methodological inconsistencies across the available studies. We conclude by making recommendations for the study of social reward and punishment processing in SSD in future research.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document