Using brain imaging to measure emotional response to product appearance

Brain imaging systems are a set of techniques that allow visualizing the regions of the brain that are activated when (emotional) stimuli are presented. Their advantage over traditional methods of measuring emotion, like self-reports is that they leave out response biases. This paper presents what brain imaging measurement can do for emotional design. It also reviews the brain imaging studies that have been performed in the field of emotional design. Very few such studies were found, and they were dispersed among different disciplines: design, marketing, advertising, human-computer interaction. One of the results of that investigation is that the complexity of brain imaging systems and of designing adequate experimental setups imply that brain imaging be reserved for some very specific purposes, like obtaining the very first impression of a product design

Consumer Willingness to Pay for Swiss Chicken Meat: An In-store Survey to Link Stated and Revealed Buying Behaviour

In a global economy food origin is gaining increasing attention as determining purchase criterion in food consumption. Consequently, for many consumers a product’s country-of-origin (COO) is an important cue in evaluating both domestic and foreign products. A double-bounded dichotomous choice approach in an in-store setting was used to assess consumers’ preference and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for the product attribute “Swiss origin” relative to “European origin” for chicken meat. Data collection took place in the poultry section of six grocery stores in Francophone Switzerland. Sample selection was based on the consumer’s purchase decision, that is only actual chicken buyers were questioned. During the survey product data of participants’ actual purchase were recorded. Thus, both hypothetical stated and revealed consumer behaviour data were collected. Based on 450 records we highlight four different consumer segments, notably “Loyal Swiss”, “Low Price Swiss Zappers”, “Price Orientated”, and „The Gourmets”. At an equal price, 90% of the entire sample prefers Swiss chicken meat. To elicit mean WTP for “Swiss origin” we used logit analysis. The results indicate that mean WTP differs significantly between the highlighted consumer segments. “Loyal Swiss” – medium to high priced Swiss chicken meat consumers – are willing to pay a premium of about 7.40 Euros per kilo chicken breast of Swiss origin. This premium corresponds with actual price differences of at most 7.50 €/kg for Swiss chicken breast relative to European found in the researched grocery stores. “Low Price Swiss Zappers” are willing to pay a premium of 2.10 €/kg chicken breast of Swiss origin. In contrast, the “Price Orientated” and „The Gourmets” are not willing to pay any premium for Swiss origin. This corresponds with their revealed purchase behaviour as they bought imported European chicken. Considering mean WTP for the entire sample of 3.00 €/kg for Swiss origin, we conclude that this is not a good predictor for specific consumer segments. It over-, or underestimates mean WTP of the highlighted consumer segments. Using both stated and revealed consumer behaviour data, we are able to calculate consumer group specific mean WTP which leads to more appropriate results for agribusiness and marketing purposes.contingent valuation method, country-of-origin, willingness-to-pay, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Neuromarketing empirical approaches and food choice: A systematic review

Consumers' food choices are often driven by reasons of which consumers are not fully aware. Decision-making about food is influenced by a complex set of emotions, feelings, attitudes, and values that are impossible to assess simply by asking consumers their opinions. Indeed, traditional techniques, such as self-reports or interviews, mainly allow the measurement of conscious and rational reactions to a product or advertising. Recently, there has been a rapidly growing interest in the multidisciplinary field of “neuromarketing,” which takes advantage of neuroscientific techniques to study consumer behavior. This discipline applies neuroscientific methods and tools that allow the measurement of consumers' emotional and spontaneous reactions in a more objective and observable way. The aim of this paper is (a) to describe neuromarketing's underlying assumptions, techniques, and the advantages of this perspective, examining the scientific literature on the use of neuromarketing in food studies; and (b) to suggest best practices to apply this novel approach in the food marketing domain, with a specific focus on non-invasive methods. Finally, although the perception of nutritional elements has already been explored, the health content of labels, the presence of additives, and the evaluation of the information conveyed by food packaging remain other possible elements of interest in future food neuromarketing research

The implicit preference evaluation for the ceramic tiles with different visual features: Evidence from an event-related potential study

BackgroundCeramic tiles are popular because of their various forms, and they are often used to decorate the environment. However, few studies have applied objective methods to explore the implicit preference and visual attention of people toward ceramic tile features. Using event-related potential technology can provide neurophysiological evidence for the study and applications of tiles.Materials and methodsThis study explored the influence of pattern, lightness, and color system factors of ceramic tiles on the preferences of people using a combination of subjective questionnaires and event-related potential (ERP) technology. Twelve different conditions of tiles (2 × 3 × 2) were used as stimuli. EEG data were collected from 20 participants while they watched the stimuli. Subjective preference scores and average ERPs were analyzed using analysis of variance and correlation analysis.Results(1) Pattern, lightness, and color system factors significantly affected the subjective preference scores for tiles; the unpatterned tiles, light-toned tiles, and warm-colored tiles received higher preference scores. (2) The preferences of people for different features of tiles moderated ERP amplitudes. (3) The light-toned tiles with a high preference score caused a greater N100 amplitude than the medium-toned and dark-toned tiles; and the patterned tiles and warm-colored tiles with low preference scores induced greater P200 and N200 amplitudes.DiscussionIn the early stage of visual processing, light-toned tiles attracted more attention, possibly because of the positive emotional effects related to the preference. The greater P200 and N200 elicited by the patterned and neutral-colored tiles in the middle stage of visual processing indicates that patterned and neutral-colored tiles attracted more attention. This may be due to negativity bias, where more attention is allocated to negative stimuli that people strongly dislike. From the perspective of cognitive processes, the results indicate that the lightness of ceramic tiles is the factor that people first detect, and the visual processing of pattern and color system factors of ceramic tiles belong to a higher level of visual processing. This study provides a new perspective and relevant information for assessing the visual characteristics of tiles for environmental designers and marketers involved in the ceramic tiles industry

A quantitative aesthetic measurement method for product appearance design

Product appearance is one of the crucial factors that influence consumers’ purchase decisions. The attractiveness of product appearance is mainly determined by the inherent aesthetics of the design composition related to the arrangement of visual design elements. Hence, it is critical to study and improve the arrangement of visual design elements for product appearance design. Strategies that apply aesthetic design principles to assist designers in effectively arranging visual design elements are widely acknowledged in both academia and industry. However, applying aesthetic design principles relies heavily on the designer’s perception and experience, while it is rather challenging for novice designers. Meanwhile, it is hard to measure and quantify design aesthetics in designing artefacts when designers refer to existing successful designs. In this regard, this study aims to introduce a method that assists designers in applying aesthetic design principles to improve the attractiveness of product appearance. Furthermore, formulas for aesthetic measurement based on aesthetic design principles are also developed, and it makes an early attempt to provide quantified aesthetic measurements of design artefacts. A case study on camera design was conducted to demonstrate the merits of the proposed method where the improved strategies for the camera appearance design offer insights for concept generation in product appearance design based on aesthetic design principles

Psychotextiles and their interaction with the human brain

This work crosses the boundaries between design and technology, and it focuses on pattern design, its relationship with neuroscience and how new SMART products can be developed from this interaction. What we see in our environment has significant influence on our emotion and behaviour. A simple shape and form is able to impact on our emotions. This research has explored the emotional effect evoked by different visual pattern characteristics. Two paired pattern categories were investigated: repeating/non-repeating and weak/intense. Repeating patterns contain regularly repeating elements and have symmetrical and continuous features; in contrast, non-repeating patterns contain irregularly repeating elements and have asymmetrical and discontinuous features. Weak patterns are faint, light and simple compared to intense patterns that are high in contrast, bold and complex. The emotional response to each type of pattern was investigated directly by brain and cardiac activities of twenty subjects by electroencephalography (EEG) and electrocardiography (ECG) measurements and by self-evaluation; the former is used to measure the brain wave activity, and the ECG to analyse the heart rate changes. These physiological signals were then analysed, interpreted and correlated with people’s self-evaluation of their emotional response to the pattern. It was found that repeating patterns produce a more pleasant sensation than non-repeating patterns, and intense patterns evoke a higher level of excitement than weak patterns. The significant changes in the emotional effects found by changes of pattern and the good correlation of the objective and subjective emotional measurements encouraged the implementation of pattern change by design and production of SMART fabrics. Four knitted fabrics with the ability of switching their pattern appearance from repeating to non-repeating, and from weak to intense have been successfully produced with a purpose made electrochromic composite yarn. The emotional effects of pattern-changing of these fabrics have been further investigated. The notion of influencing human emotion by engineering the pattern design and characteristics of SMART textiles is established and these fabrics are named Psychotextiles. Finally the event-related potential (ERP) investigation of the visual brain (no thinking, or memory) revealed that there may be an influence on human emotional effects in less than 1 second from the time of seeing the object; a time sufficiently short for these to be little analysis within the brain

Current Trends in the Application of EEG in Neuromarketing: A Bibliometric Analysis

Despite several neuroscience tools existing, electroencephalography (EEG) is the most used and favoured tool among researchers because of its relatively low cost and high temporal resolution. Our study aimed to identify the global academic research trends of the empirical EEG studies in neuromarketing. This paper adopted the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol to identify relevant articles. A bibliometric analysis software (VOSviewer) was used to evaluate thirty open-access articles found in the Scopus database between 2016 and 2020. We found that the USA is the most productive country with five research articles that used the EEG tool in marketing studies, followed by Australia, Italy, and Malaysia with three articles each. According to the most prolific journals in neuromarketing, it has been found that Frontiers in Neuroscience journal (CiteScore 5.4) is the most prolific journal with two articles and 25 total citations, followed by Scientific reports (CiteScore 7.1) with two articles and eighteen total citations, which lead us to infer that the publications’ number does not necessarily reflect the citations’ number. The study provides a profound and comprehensive overview of academic research that used EEG in marketing research

Social cognitive and neural mechanisms of food choice under the influence of food-related information

Food is the fuel of life. As such food stimuli are intensively processed by the human brain and the consequences of these processes, resulting in our food choice, have an essential impact on our life. Research suggested that food choice is largely guided by predominantly learned preference, and is likely to be influenced by information regarding the food (e.g., nutritional value) as well as by learned beliefs and associations (e.g., between a given food and its health value). This project aims at understanding at both behavioral and neural levels how these non-physiological factors might influence the food/drink choice and how they can be modified to improve our choice. Chapter 1 includes the literature review on 1) how semantic information influences implicit/explicit associations toward food/drink, 2) the predictive validity implicit/explicit associations on food/drink choice, 3) the behavioral and neural evidence of changing associations, choices, and impulsivity control toward food/drink by implementing a conditioning paradigm (e.g. evaluative conditioning). The motivation and the objectives of my Ph.D. project are also presented here. Chapter 2 contains Study 1 (Experiment 1 and 2). The first aim of the thesis is to understand how the association between a certain food and different concepts may guide our choices. This is addressed in Experiment 1 where I investigated how our choices can be predicted by preference and/or implicit associations between different constructs of interest (e.g., social status) and coffee and/or tea. People\u2019s self-report preference, implicit and explicit associations between different social constructs and tea/coffee were measured. Results based on 22 Italian healthy adults indicate that they possess strong implicit associations between tea and low social status, and this association significantly predicted choice of tea. The second aim of the thesis is to investigate whether the associations between food/drink and certain constructs can be changed through a classical learning paradigm, evaluative conditioning (EC), in which the associations between target drinks/food and food-related information was manipulated. This approach allowed us to investigate a possible strategy of intervention that could improve drink/food choices. This is addressed in Experiment 2 whereby a within-subject design is employed with participants going through both EC-condition and control condition. Results based on 68 healthy adults show that the implicit associations between tea and high-social-status, as well as the preference towards tea, significantly increase after EC. Most importantly, the difference in implicit associations across conditions significantly predict the difference in choices of tea between conditions, indicating that changes in implicit associations determine changes in choice. Chapter 3 is dedicated to the third aim which is to identify the neural mechanisms underlying the changes in association after EC between foods and the concepts of healthiness and sustainability. To this end changes in neural markers were related to changes in food choice as well as personal eating habits and individual difference in restraint eating and impulsive behavior. In Study 2, I experimentally strengthened the association between the concept of unhealthiness/unsustainability and heavily-processed food, and between healthiness/sustainability and minimally-processed food. A semantic congruency task combined with the Electroencephalography (EEG) technique was used to investigate changes in neural activity of the N400 in incongruent trials. Results on 18 healthy adults derived by comparing neural signatures of incongruent trials between conditions demonstrated that the magnitude of the N400 in left dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) for minimally-processed high-calorie food significantly increased after EC. Thus, EC can be considered as an effective method to strengthen the semantic association between foods and a given concept, indexed by the change of neural signature tracking the semantic conflict. This increased magnitude also positively correlated with the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale score, indicating that the more impulsive a person is, the greater the change in magnitude of the N400. Chapter 4 is devoted to address the fourth aim of the thesis that is to understand whether control of impulsivity over unhealthy food choice can be improved through the evaluative priming (EP) that is a variation of EC used in Study 2. Thus in Study 3, 15 healthy adults went through a pre-EP and a post-EP test including a Go/NoGo task combined with EEG. During EP, an increased subjective liking was found for Minimally-Processed Low-Calorie food images in evaluative block. For GNG tasks, at neural level, the averaged amplitude at left DLPFC for food images with evaluative priming was more negative in post-EP than in pre-EP GNG task. More negative N200 amplitudes were consistently found at left DLPFC in post-EP GNG task for Heavily-Processed Low-Calorie food as well as for Minimally-Processed Low-Calorie food. The behavioral and neural evidence showed the improvement of self-control towards food stimuli through evaluative priming. The possible role of left dorsal lateral prefrontal region in online value modulation and in integrating the stimulus feature with related information was identified, suggesting the self-control process based on deliberated thinking with symbolic representations and information operations. In Chapter 5 I summarized and discussed the main findings of my thesis. In short, my project provides the basic roadmap for understanding how food/drink related information affects cognitive and neural underpinnings of food/drink choices. Indeed, choices can be improved through modifying associations between food/drink and related information and thus healthy diets are encouraged. These results provide a potentially interesting research avenue well as possible interventions to modify and improve food/drink choices that could possibly be applied to individuals with eating disorders