| Consumer neuroscience is a growing approach to research that is garnering increased attention among academic researchers in the fields of marketing and consumer research. As marketing researchers increasingly acknowledge the shortcomings of self-reported data derived from surveys and qualitative methods, consumer researchers are searching for alternative (or complementary) methods to overcome the biases inherent in self-reports. Neuroscience methods provide one such alternative, as well as a means to dig deeper into understanding the cognitive processes and underlying mechanisms that help explain consumer behaviors. Kenning and Plassmann (2008, p. 532) note that the goal of consumer neuroscience “is to use insights and methods from neuroscience to enhance the understanding of consumer behavior”. Yet, while gaining visibility over the past decade, this approach to consumer research is yet to gain widespread use as an effective and feasible methodological approach among marketing academics. In contrast, a neuroscientific approach to understanding consumer behavior has increasingly been used by business practitioners, especially consumer brand managers. Major consumer product brands and companies, such as Coca-Cola and Campbell’s, have ventured into the use of neuroscience methods, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), eye tracking, electroencephalogram (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG) and other biometrics (i.e. physiological measures used to characterize human behavior) to better evaluate consumer responses to their ads (Looney, 2016). Other companies like General Electric (GE) have launched research centers, such as the GE BBQ research center, where researchers use EEG methods to study consumer responses to food and taste, to perfect their BBQ recipe (Garun, 2015). Associations such as The Neuromarketing Science & Business Association feature a list of neuromarketing companies across the globe, including big US-based consulting companies, such as A.C. Nielsen and the Forbes Consulting Group. Within academia, the growing body of work in consumer neuroscience has footprints across many fields, with the major outlet still being neuroscience journals (see Solnais et al., 2013 for a review of consumer neuroscience studies across specific fields). Other journal outlets include psychology, marketing and bioengineering. In marketing journals, EEGbased studies to date have most frequently been used in combination with brands and advertising stimuli. See Table I for an overview of marketing- or consumer-related EEG studies. A few studies have also used a related methodology, MEG, which is similar in its neurophysiological processes to EEG (Ambler et al., 2004; Braeutigam et al., 2001, 2004). Nevertheless, when marketing researchers have applied a neuroscientific approach to understanding the behavior of consumers, there seems to be a bias toward the use of fMRI (Reimann et al., 2011; Plassmann et al., 2015). |
