New frontiers in neuromarketing research:Benefit and potential applications of GRAIL

Recent years has seen an explosion in the application of neuroscience techniques to market research, known as neuromarketing. The aim of this paper is to contribute to both theoretical and practical aspects of neuromarketing research by presenting a new and innovative neuroscience tool for studying marketing-relevant behavior, namely GRAIL. GRAIL combines different devices (e.g. EEG, ET, facial EMG) into one single real-time device. It can help researchers and practitioners to measure physiological responses (external reflexes) and brain activity (internal reflexes) simultaneously. We argue that this new tool can improve neuromarketing research in several ways, namely in reducing the costs of neuromarketing research, improving the efficiency and accuracy of neuromarketing experiments, and recreating real-life purchase experiences using virtual reality and personalized scenarios

Investigating Individual Preferences and Brain Activity in a Wine Tasting Experience:a Neuromarketing Approach

The study examines physiological and neuronal processes of 26 inexpert wine drinkers in order to understand how consumers judge and choose wines during product experience. We analysed if an increase in the beta band activity can be related to reward process and individual preference for a wine. The results confirmed that 1) tasting dierent wines modulate individual preferences and beta band activity and 2) the higher preferences for a wine corresponded to a stronger decrease in beta band oscillations

Consumer Neuroscience:Attentional Preferences for Wine Labeling Reflected in the Posterior Contralateral Negativity

During the decision-making process, consumers notice, inspect, and visually scan different products. External characteristics of a product, such as design, packaging, label, and logo, have been shown to strongly influence how customers perceive, assess, and select a product. Marketers have put a lot of effort into determining the factors that trigger consumers’ visual attention toward products, using traditional research methods, self-reports, or observations. The use of neuroscientific tools to study consumer behavior may improve our understanding of how external characteristics influence consumers’ visual attention. Consumer neuroscience research shows that preferences for a product may already be reflected in brain activity before customers make a final decision. Using electroencephalography (EEG), we investigated whether the design of different wine labeling influences individual preferences, reflected in the neural activity related to visual attention. More specifically, we examined whether the posterior contralateral negativity (PCN) can be used to assess and predict consumers’ preferences for a specific product based on its external characteristics. The PCN is commonly used to estimate attentional selection by focusing on stimulus-side dependent EEG lateralization above parieto-occipital areas. We computed the PCN to assess whether a certain wine label caught participants’ visual attention and additionally by comparing the PCN with behavioral data (wine preferences and reaction times) to determine whether early effects of visual attention could predict participants’ final preferences for a specific label. Our findings indicate that the PCN provides relevant information on visual attention mechanisms for external characteristics, as the view of the four labels modulated PCN amplitude. We hope this study can help researchers and practitioners in examining the effects of external product characteristics on consumer choice by estimating the changes in the EEG that are related to visual attention

How can we improve consumer behaviour research? A critical literature review on the contributions and the limitations of consumer neuroscience

Understanding the decision-making process of consumers and their buying behaviour is still a critical goal in Marketing research. With the turn of the century, Marketing researchers are adopting different techniques and tools in order to study consumer decision-making and behaviour. The last two decades have seen an explosion in the use of neuroimaging techniques to market research, also known as Consumer Neuroscience. The aim of this paper is to contribute to both theoretical and practical aspects of Consumer Neuroscience research. Literature review was conducted to 1) establishing the realized benefits and potential outcome of Consumer Neuroscience research and 2) identifying potential problems in Consumer Neuroscience experiments. The findings presented in this paper suggest that Consumer Neuroscience contributes to a systematic understanding of consumer behaviour and decision-making process. It is possible to identify three main contributions of Consumer Neuroscience tools to Marketing research. Consumer Neuroscience can improve 1) our understanding of behavioural phenomena relevant for Marketing; 2) marketing strategy for the four elements of marketing-mix (product, price, promotion and distribution); 3) problems in organizations, like trust, negotiations and pricing. However, problems such as reverse inference, lack of unified theory and definitions, small sample size, absence of Marginal Utility theory can reduce the quality work and scientific knowledge in this field. Overcome these limitations it is essential in order to improve both Consumer Neuroscience and Marketing research

How can we improve consumer behaviour research? A critical literature review on the contributions and the limitations of consumer neuroscience

Understanding the decision-making process of consumers and their buying behaviour is still a critical goal in Marketing research. With the turn of the century, Marketing researchers are adopting different techniques and tools in order to study consumer decision-making and behaviour. The last two decades have seen an explosion in the use of neuroimaging techniques to market research, also known as Consumer Neuroscience. The aim of this paper is to contribute to both theoretical and practical aspects of Consumer Neuroscience research. Literature review was conducted to 1) establishing the realized benefits and potential outcome of Consumer Neuroscience research and 2) identifying potential problems in Consumer Neuroscience experiments. The findings presented in this paper suggest that Consumer Neuroscience contributes to a systematic understanding of consumer behaviour and decision-making process. It is possible to identify three main contributions of Consumer Neuroscience tools to Marketing research. Consumer Neuroscience can improve 1) our understanding of behavioural phenomena relevant for Marketing; 2) marketing strategy for the four elements of marketing-mix (product, price, promotion and distribution); 3) problems in organizations, like trust, negotiations and pricing. However, problems such as reverse inference, lack of unified theory and definitions, small sample size, absence of Marginal Utility theory can reduce the quality work and scientific knowledge in this field. Overcome these limitations it is essential in order to improve both Consumer Neuroscience and Marketing research

The decision-making process between rationality and emotions

The decision-making process has been analyzed in several disciplines (economics, social sciences, humanities, etc.) with the aim of creating models to help decision-makers in strategy formulation. The Organizational theory takes into account both the decision-making process of individuals and groups of a company. Numerous models have been built, which include a wide range of psychological, environmental, hierarchical factors, all of which only account the notion of rationality. In time, such concept has come to be considered pragmatically unrealistic and unachievable. Emotions have recently acquired an increasingly significant position (in the academic and economic society) as important component of the decision making-process. From this point of view neuroscience, the new branch of medical sciences could play a key role in studying individual decision-making processes. This article suggests that thanks to neuroscience it is possible to overcome current limitations in economics studies, for individual’s choices, which are exclusively based on the rational component

The decision-making process between rationality and emotions

The decision-making process has been analyzed in several disciplines (economics, social sciences, humanities, etc.) with the aim of creating models to help decision-makers in strategy formulation. The Organizational theory takes into account both the decision-making process of individuals and groups of a company. Numerous models have been built, which include a wide range of psychological, environmental, hierarchical factors, all of which only account the notion of rationality. In time, such concept has come to be considered pragmatically unrealistic and unachievable. Emotions have recently acquired an increasingly significant position (in the academic and economic society) as important component of the decision making-process. From this point of view neuroscience, the new branch of medical sciences could play a key role in studying individual decision-making processes. This article suggests that thanks to neuroscience it is possible to overcome current limitations in economics studies, for individual’s choices, which are exclusively based on the rational component