Neuromarketing – marketing insights from neuroimaging research

Increasing evidence suggests that much of our decision-making occurs via mechanisms that are inaccessible to our more rational and conscious thought processes

by Phil Harris

Listen to lecture - August 2008 (MP3 10.7MB)

Decision without reason?

Imagine for a moment that you are in your local liquor store, shopping for a bottle of wine. You have a delicious meal planned for the evening, and a good bottle of red will add the final touch. Imagine that your gaze falls on two bottles, side by side on the shelf. One French, and one German. The bottles are a similar price, a similar style, and to all intents and purposes, they appear to be of similar quality. You feel that either of these will meet your needs, but how do you choose? Imagine that as you ponder your choice, the sound of a very French piano-accordion melody gently floats through the store. Will it affect your choice? And if so, will you be aware that your choice has been swayed?

Recently, a group of researchers examined exactly this question, and found striking results. Wine shoppers were roughly three times more likely to purchase wine of the same nationality as background music. Striking enough, but critically, only one of forty-four shoppers interviewed suggested that the background music influenced their purchase decision, and over three-quarters specifically said that the background music did not affect their choice of wine! How could they have been so out of touch with the influences on their behaviour?

Mounting evidence suggests that the wine shoppers are not alone. Indeed, there is increasing evidence from psychology and neurosciences research to suggest that very few of us are aware of some of the main determinants of our decisions. We fancy ourselves as rational decision-makers, able to weigh up the factors relevant to our decisions to arrive at reasoned choices. However, it appears that much of our decision-making is driven by thought processes that occur ‘below-the-surface’. Indeed, increasing evidence suggests that much of our decision-making occurs via mechanisms that are inaccessible to our more rational and conscious thought processes.

This mounting evidence provides a major challenge for marketing researchers and the industries they supply with consumer insights. Consumers provide valuable insights to organisations about their attitudes and likely behaviour towards products, services and ideas. Communication industries, in particular, are heavily reliant on consumers’ insights to inform the design of marketing communications, such as television advertisements. There is ample data to suggest that such research can provide valuable insights to organisations, but in the light of mounting evidence, we must seriously question the emphasis we place on consumers’ explicit thoughts regarding their choices.

Neuroimaging research informs marketing models

Neuroscience-based research methods are increasingly being viewed as a means to provide these types of insights. The nascent field of ‘neuromarketing’ seeks to access the thought processes underlying decision-making by capturing consumer responses to marketing materials at the moment they are presented. By examining how different regions of the brain ‘light up’ on a second-by-second basis when exposed to stimuli, and linking this information with an understanding of how different brain areas contribute to thought, this novel approach is providing unique insights on the thought processes underlying choices in real-world situations.

As an example, consider a recent study examining neural responses associated with the Coca-Cola^®/Pepsi^® taste test. Coke and Pepsi are similar cola-flavoured carbonated drinks. The marginally sweeter Pepsi flavour is typically preferred by its core target market aged between 16 and 24 years. However, this preference is strongest when consumers are unaware of the cola brand they are consuming. In branded tasting tests of Coca-Cola and Pepsi, preferences favour Coke. Since 1975, Pepsi has promoted the ‘Pepsi Challenge’ to emphasise the advantage of the Pepsi taste in order to provide a rational basis for brand preference. However, neuroimaging research, which has recorded the brain’s responses while these factors are at play, shows the limited role of rational decision-making factors in determining overall brand preference. It provides a fascinating insight into the mechanics of marketing.

In 2004, researchers replicated the Pepsi Challenge while consumers’ brain activity was recorded. When consumers sipped cola drinks from unlabelled cups, cola preference for either brand activated a region of the brain linked with preferences based on sensory information. The greater the sensation, such as taste, the more this region of the brain lit up. This response mirrors the Pepsi Challenge findings when taste alone is used as the basis for choice.

However, what about responses in a more realistic choice situation? How does the addition of brand information affect choice? The 2004 research showed that preferences for Pepsi did not change when the Pepsi brand was identified, whereas Coke preferences increased. Branded Coke preferences stimulated activity in a completely different neural system in the brain, this time associated with long-term memory – memory embedded for life. It appears that as consumers experience the flavour of Coke, exposure to the Coke brand image evokes associations that have been stored in long-term memory circuits. Critically, the memory regions are strongly connected with brain regions that bias preference. As a result, associations held in memory influence other brain areas that respond to taste. Thus, the research shows that by examining the neural responses associated with brand effects, we can see the mental mechanics of the strongest brand at work.

Emotional influences on decisions

In another recent study, researchers offered consumers a choice between familiar beer and coffee products of similar quality and with similar attributes. In this case, the researchers were interested in strategies consumers would use to make a choice between similar products when the comparison is not well supported by a rational comparison of product features. Interestingly, products that were not chosen ‘lit up’ the brain region associated with the use of reasoning strategies. In this case, the authors suggest that when consumers applied a rational approach to evaluate products with no tangible differential advantage, these products were not favoured.

In contrast, products that were eventually chosen ‘lit up’ the brain region linked to the use of emotional experience to guide decision-making. This region draws on the emotional value of previous experiences to subtly bias decision-making in future encounters. In this case, the authors suggest that emotional associations with the brand, developed either through exposure to marketing communications or actual experience, bias the product evaluation process or result in a preference for that brand most strongly associated with positive emotional cues. Note that the evaluation process involved comparison of nearly identical products, yet in this case, the decision was based on intangible brand-related factors. In sum, this fascinating research suggests that two very different types of thought processes underlie consumer decision-making: a reasoning chain which conducts a rational analysis of purchase factors; and an emotional chain which biases the decision-making process as a result of previous emotional experience.

Figure 1

A growing body of research indicates that subtle emotionally-driven thinking processes perform a fundamental role in everyday decision-making. Individuals automatically draw on cues that reflect the emotional value of stimuli derived from previous experience. These automatic processes are so important that without the impact of these subtle emotional biases, individuals demonstrate poorly adaptive behaviour in everyday life.

Importantly, this ‘emotional chain’ of decision-making draws on mental processes that, to a large extent, occur covertly or unconsciously. Consumers may be simply unaware of the impact of these emotional biases on decisions. In this connection, the question arises whether research methods that probe rational and conscious processes are able to obtain reliable information on consumer behaviour. For example, common among many of the methods used to test the effectiveness of advertising stimuli, are survey or interview-based approaches which gauge the extent to which consumers consciously recall advertising content and ‘get the message’. In the light of increasing evidence demonstrating an impact on consumers’ reactions to advertising and brands at a subtler neural level, communications research methods must adapt to these new insights.

Assessing these emotionally-driven covert consumer responses presents a formidable challenge to researchers. However, with increasing evidence of the impact of unconscious thought processes on behaviour and a growing dissatisfaction with conventional testing methods, the drive for these unique insights has prompted the rise of commercially-oriented marketing research services based on brain activity responses.

Neuroscience techniques as tools for business

What are these measures, and how useful are they for business? Typically, research firms attempting to capture these implicit thought processes assess brain responses to marketing stimuli in the form of electroencephalography (EEG) – the electrical signal generated by neural regions firing simultaneously – or by using medical imaging technology such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

To collect EEG data, participants are fitted with special headgear, which records the electrical signal on the scalp while viewers are exposed to marketing stimuli. Using this approach, responses of individual brain regions to stimuli may be examined continuously to provide diagnostic information regarding the impact of specific elements of the marketing stimulus. By contrast, functional MRI (fMRI) research provides more detailed but less dynamic ‘snapshots’ of brain responses.

Opinions differ regarding the value of these measures in commercial contexts. Proponents of EEG research point to the unique ability of these measures to reflect dynamic changes in viewer responses to marketing stimuli. For the first time, advertisers and media organisations may capture audience responses linked to specific scenes or messages with little interference from rational and explicit thought processes.

However, others point to the weak link between brain electrical activity measures collected in market research settings and constructs that usefully predict consumer behaviour. For example, Brian Knutson, professor of neuroscience and psychology at Stanford University, has likened the use of EEG for marketing research purposes to ‘standing outside a baseball stadium and listening to the crowd to figure out what happened.’ Clearly, the value of brain activity measures for commercial research is dependent on the extent that these measures can capture responses in commercially viable settings and still provide reliable and useful marketing research constructs. To date, peer-reviewed research literature provides limited support for the use of these techniques in commercial contexts. At this early stage, the jury is still out regarding the long-term prospects for market research techniques drawing on brain response metrics. Additionally, ethical issues associated with the use of brain responses to guide marketing programs remain an important but relatively unexplored source of debate.

Neuroimaging methods provide the scope for a better understanding of the complexity of human decision-making processes. Commercial application of neuroscience techniques aside, rigorous implementation of these techniques in academic research contexts will support unique interdisciplinary advances in the application of marketing and neuroscience theory. Better understanding of human responses to marketing stimuli will play a key role in the future for more informed policy development regarding marketing communications and stimuli. Importantly, knowledge gained through the use of these scientific methods will provide both consumers and marketers alike with a better understanding of the role played by ubiquitous commercial stimuli in our everyday decision-making. Fancy a Coke, or Pepsi?

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A condensed version of his Alumni Refresher Lecture delivered at the University of Melbourne on 27 August 2008.