Marketing & Neurosciences
Towards a neurosciences of the consummer
In the field of neuroscience, neuromarketing and neuro-economy are at the intersection of economics and cognitive neuroscience, studying the influence of cognitive and emotional factors for a consumer to take a decision. Knowing the decision process "inputs" you can adapt the brand positioning, the communication, the advertisment ...
- The study of the human brain during consumer's buying or choice process.
- knowing this buying process ,the improving of com and advertising techniques.
The neuromarketing uses multiple medical imaging techniques to record the cerebral response to a consumer in some situations, such as watching an advertisement, the test of competing products, the act of purchase in a real situation, the perception of a brand or a politician ...
The functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electro-encephalography (EEG) or more widely different cognitive tests of human memory systems are used to identify the neurological mechanisms associated with the decision to purchase and influence those buying processes by adapting marketing tools. The neuromarketing is therefore an integrated approach of the classic marketing. Droulers and Roulet [2006] call tis approach "consumer neuroscience" including the rational dimension of the purchase decision and the increasing role of unconscious process.
These same authors distinguish two existing epystemological point of view about neuromarketing. This emerging discipline can be reduced to mercantiles applications from the point of view of some academics and a good way to have some ROI on the medical Imagery tools. But it can also be seen as an " enlargement and accumulation of knowledge about the mind-brain relations, who could be applied in the economic and management fields. " This distinction highlights the debate on the potential ethical problem related to neuromarketing. Roullet and Droulers [2006] believe that " the observation of the consummers and measures at a macroscopic level" has never influenced or changed the consummer decisions". Claiming that the discovery of certain brain activations under certain stimuli is the first commercial step towards manipulation is the affabulation or ignorance ".
Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner in economics, defined the new Homo Oeconomicu as a Homo-Psycholgicus beyond the concept of limited rationality to predictable irrationality using the neurosceinces and cognitive sciences and tracing the path of neuro economy and neuromarketing. It's then more than a discipline , it's the begining of a real revolution in the economy and more specificly in the consumption understanding.
Examples
The neuromareketing applied to politics (fMRI): Obama vs Hilary Clinton: Brain Impact announced his victory at the beginning of 2007 (download pdf - 165k)
The neuromarketing applied to Belgian politics (IBC - Brain Impact): Didier Reynders vs Elio Di Rupo (download pdf - 650k)