8/13/2019 Fine Neuromarketing-A Perspective WELINGKAR
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Brands serve to connect consumers to the products they are
purchasing either byestablishing an emotional connection or by
creating a particular image. It has been shown thatwhen consumers
are forced to choose an item from a group in which a familiar brand
is
present the choice is much easier than when consumers are forced
to choose from a group of
entirely unfamiliar brands. One MRI study found that there was
significantly increasedactivation in the brain reward centers when
consumers were looking at sports cars ascompared to sedans
(presumably because the status symbol associated with sports cars
isrewarding in some way). Many corporations have conducted similar
MRI studies toinvestigate the effect of their brand on consumers
including Delta Air Lines, General Motors,Home Depot, Hallmark, and
Motorola.
Several studies have been conducted to understand decision
making in order to investigatethe underlying processes governing
purchasing. The studies suggest that decisions involvedwith
purchasing can be seen as occurring in two halves. The first half
is concerned with
memory recall and problem identification. The second half is
associated with the purchasingdecision itself; familiar brands
produce different brain patterns than do non-familiar brandswhich
indicate that choice is at least partially intentional and
behaviour is influenced by priorexperiences.
Yahoo search engine came up with a television commercial that
features happy, dancing people around the world. Before spending
the money to air the commercial on prime-timeand cable TV, Yahoo
ran it on EEG (electroencephalography)-cap-wearing consumers.
The
brain waves showed stimulation in those parts of their brains,
where memory and emotionalthought occurs. The commercial, which is
a part of Yahoo's new $100 million branding
campaign, rolled out in September, to bring more users to the
search engine. Similarexperiments by corporate giants like Google,
Pepsi, Frito-lay, Microsoft, e-Bay, to name afew definitely add
weight to the argument supporting the use of neuromarketing.
All said and done, even though Neuromarketing is a relatively
new term in the marketingworld, its basis is to understand th e
consumer s brain and get a connect between the
product and the brain a crucial exercise. But hasn t Marketing
always entailed manipulatingconsumers tastes by appealing to
emotions and of ten irrational urges and impulsive buying?
Neuromarketing essentially is a scientific method evolved from
the traditional marketing practices that trigger buying decisions
of a customer.
But is it ethical? There s no definite answer to this dilemma.
The fMRI (Functionalmagnetic resonance imaging) technique used in
this process is an imaging method and not a
