Arthur Asa Berger 1 Neuromarketing
Arthur Asa Berger
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Neuromarketing
Neuromarketing can be defined as the obtaining of information useful for
marketers by subjecting individuals to functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
and other similar methods of studying automatic responses in the brain to certain stimuli,
generally involving products and brands that are part of consumer culture. The term
seems to have been first used by Ale Smidts, a marketing research scholar at Erasmus
University in the Netherlands, around 2002. There are questions about the origins of the
method, but some researchers suggest it began when Gerry Zaltman, a marketing
professor at Harvard University, started scanning people’s brains to gain insights into
consumer preferences.
Some scholars consider neuromarketing to be a branch of neuroeconomics and
others describe it as a part of decision-neuroscience. There are 425,000 web sites listed
on Google under “Neuromarketing” and 224,000 web sites listed under Neuroeconomics
on Google, including centers at George Mason University, MIT, Duke University, and
the California Institute of Technology, and a Society for Neuroeconomics, that was
incorporated in 2005. There are more than a hundred books listed under neuromarketing
on Amazon.com but most of them are about advertising and other aspects of consumer
culture.
Arthur Asa Berger 2 Neuromarketing
Neuromarketing is a means of studying consumer preferences and buying
patterns by examining automatic neurological responses—that is, which parts of people’s
brains light up due to increased oxygenated blood flow--when they are shown images of
products or other material related to consumer culture. This method avoids problems
caused by asking people to verbalize their feelings about products and brands, since their
responses to these questions are not always reliable. On the other hand, there is the
question of how much the fMRI machines, which are noisy and which stress people being
tested to some degree, may have an impact on the brain’s functioning. There is also the
matter of how marketers translate the physical responses of our brains, as discovered by
fMRI imagining, into campaigns and advertising that will be effective. The theory is
that when we understand more about how the brain functions, and can see what responses
the brain has to certain stimuli, we can use our knowledge of the emotional responses
people make to images of products and brands to figure out better ways of shaping
consumer decision making.
An important experiment in the development of neuromarketing occurred in 2003
when professor Read Montague, director of the Human Neuroimaging Lab and the
Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine, used fMRI to find
out why Pepsi won blind taste tests but people generally said they preferred the taste of
Coca-Cola. Dr. Montague discovered that the medial prefrontal cortex of people being
scanned lit up brightly when they were told they were drinking Coca-Cola, due, in some
measure it is assumed, to the effectiveness of Coca-Cola’s marketing and advertising.
Neuromarketing techniques are now being employed in many countries. In
Oxford, England, a company named Neurosense has used neuromarketing to determine
how viewers respond to commercials at different times of the day. There are numerous
researchers in the field, such as BrightHouse Neurostrategies Group in Atlanta, a
neuromarketing consulting company in Vienna, Neuroconsult; a company in Los Angles,
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FKF, that uses neuromarketing to study political decision making; researchers at the
Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology; a
neuroeconomics lab at Stanford; the Center for Neuroeconomics in the Netherlands;
SalesBrain in San Francisco; and companies in many other countries using fMRI imaging
for a variety of purposes.
Neuromarketing is also a factor in political campaigns. Research has indicated
that many people’s political affiliations are more or less “hard-wired” and that they do
not, generally speaking, respond to logical arguments when making choices for political
offices. It has also been found that parts of the brain light up differently in Democrats
and Republicans when shown images of the September 11th World Trades Center
disaster.
Nueromarketers face the problem of how to translate the physical responses of
our brains into marketing and advertising campaigns that will be effective. Just because a
certain part of a person’s brain lights up dramatically when shown an image of a product
or a brand doesn’t mean that person has positive feelings about it or will want to purchase
that product. The Knudson study found that “specific patterns of brain activation predict
purchasing,” but there are a number of variables that can adversely affect things, such as
high prices. Some marketing scholars and practitioners regard neuromarketing as one
more fad sweeping the industry, whose influence and impact will be short lived. Whether
neuromarketing becomes an important tool in marketing (with Orwellian implications
involving some kind of mind control) or is just a passing fad remains to be seen. Another
problem is that neuromarketing is relatively expensive to use.
Finally, there is the matter of ethical questions involved with using the kind of
information obtained in fMRI studies to persuade people to purchase products and
services or to vote for certain politicians or political parties by hitting their “buy buttons.”
Some psychologists consider neuroeconomics and neuromarketing research to be
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unethical, though the American Psychological Association accepts neuromarketing
research as acceptable and not something that will be detrimental to people’s well being.
Bibliography
Knutson, Brian, Scott Rick, G. Elliott Wimmer, Drazen Prelec, and George Loewenstein,
“Neural Predictors of Purchases.” Neuron 53, 147-156. January 4, 2007. Elsevier, Inc.
McCarthy, Terry. “Getting Inside Your Head.” 95-97. Time. Oct. 24, 2005.
“Neuromarketing.” Wickepedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wickipedia.org/wiki/Neuromarketing.
Renvoisé, Patrick and Christophe Morin. (2007).
Neuromarketing: Understanding the “Buy Buttons” in Your Customer’s Brain.
Nashville, Tenn: Thomas Nelson.
Szegedy-Maszak, Marianne. “Mysteries of the Mind,” 53-61. U.S. News & World
Report. Feb. 28, 2005.