Neural Predictors of Purchases

In a Consumers mind, the purchase decision taken where he/she decided whether to purchase a
product is generally seen as a core unit for economic analysis.

The authors mentioned that in markets ranging from the bazaar to the Internet, people would
typically consider specific characteristics of available products, determine their cost and the
perceived value, and would then decide whether he/she would actually want to purchase a product
or whether he/she would not wish to purchase. The real success of this economic theory rests on the
ability to characterize this decision process in consumers’ minds.

However, Neuroeconomic methods would help us in separating and characterizing unique individual
components of the elementary purchase decision process which goes on in individual consumers.

Moreover, in addition to being attracted to preferred products due to experience, these consumers
would also tend to avoid prices that seem excessive. This is the reason why many incentive schemes
such as the credit card were created in order to promote and affect this purchase decision process
and hence, appear designed to diminish the salient features of making payments and to try and
create an illusion that products actually have no cost in the present context.

The goal of this study was to characterize neural predictors of purchases. The authors hypothesized
and located that activation in regions related to anticipating gain (the NAcc) was directly correlative
with product preference, whereas activation in regions which were related to anticipating loss (the
insula) was directly correlative with high costs. Furthermore, activation in the very area involved in
integration gains and losses (the MFPC) were directly correlative with reduced costs.

Analyses of your time course information which was extracted from each of these regions in the
brain indicated that while NAcc activation was seen at first during subsequent purchase decisions for
the test subjects, throughout product presentation, the insula and MPFC activation was observed in
subsequent purchase decisions throughout the price presentation.

Even when situations were being controlled for retrospective self-reported preference and buying
price, activation in these brain regions, severally showed the indication to buy, independent of each
other.

Validation analyses indicated that the phenomenon of brain activation to predict various purchases
would generalize to different purchasing eventualities. The results failed to vary considerably as a
operate of subjects’ sex and replicated across two completely different sets of products.

Together, these findings counsel that activation of distinct brain regions associated with the
anticipation of gain and loss precedes the purchase decision and may be used way in advance to
predict purchase decisions.

The study’s design and additional analyses were made in such a way that it ruled out a wide range
for alternative accounts of brain activation before the actual purchase decision.

The first way in it did that was by expecting anticipatory activation, and the result later showed that
this anticipatory activation could not be attributed to the test result of increased motor preparation
before the subjects actual began purchasing.

Moreover, reaction times between the decision to purchase and not to buy didn’t differ much, which
in turn removes another alternative account for brain activation.
Furthermore, Self-reported familiarity with products beforehand did not account for the correlation
between the subject’s NAcc activation and choice of preference, since additional localization tests of
the subjects indicated that familiarity with the product was not correlated with NAcc activation
during the product and price presentation.

Additionally, another set of trials were run, and it was found that previously owned items were
omitted from analyses, hence it approves the hypothesis.

Similarly, price alone did not account for the correlation that found in the subject’s mind between
the MFPC activation and price differential, since additional localization analysis reported so.

Hence, we can see that price was not correlated with MPFC activation during the price presentation
period, and prediction analyses, including the price, did not affect MPFC activation.

This study determined whether the brain circuit of neural networks respond to product preference
versus excessive prices and to find out whether anticipatory activation could affect the signals
coming from these regions, and hence could independently predict subsequent decisions to
purchase, and it manages to do so.

The findings of this report have several implications attached to it. With respect to neuroscience, by
implying that standard circuits in decisions to purchase diverse products, the results appear to be
consistent with a “common currency” account of purchasing as given from another report.

However, they additionally suggest that decisions to purchase may involve distinct dimensions which
are related to anticipated gain and loss in the minds of people, contrary to the expectation that just
a single aspect is related to the expected benefit.

This finding has many implications for understanding behavioural anomalies, such as the consumers’
growing tendency to overspend and under save in the market when purchasing with credit cards
rather than cash.

In summary, this study provides us with some evidence that specific patterns of brain activation
would, in turn, predict the purchasing process or any other future purchase. The findings are also
very consistent with an existing hypothesis that the human brain would frame preference as a
potential benefit to the consumer and price as a possible cost to the consumer, and would lend
credence to the notion that the entire process of consumer purchasing reflects a combination of
preference and price considerations.