Neuroethics
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-019-09400-z
ORIGINAL PAPER
The Meta-Analysis of Neuro-Marketing Studies: Past, Present
and Future
Mehri Shahriari & Davood Feiz & Azim Zarei &
Ehsan Kashi
Received: 25 September 2018 / Accepted: 21 January 2019
# Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract One of the new topics that has attracted the
attention of researchers in recent years is neuro-market-
ing. The purpose of the present study is to achieve an
insight into the progress of studies on neuro-marketing
through review of scientific articles in this field with
methodology text-mining. A total of 394 articles were
selected between 2005 and 2017 using the search for
Bneuro-marketing^ in valid databases. By reviewing the
title, abstract, and keywords at various stages of screen-
ing, the researchers selected 311 articles related to the
neuro-marketing topic in order to carry out the text
mining process. Then, pre-processing of data was per-
formed and using cluster analysis, 6 optimal clusters
were obtained according to Davis Bouldin index. Using
the multi-attribute decision-making technique (SAW),
the most important roots were ranked in each cluster.
The results showed that interest in research on neuro-
M. Shahriari : D. Feiz (*) : A. Zarei
Faculty of Economic, Management and Administrative Sciences,
Semnan University, Semnan, IR, Iran
e-mail: feiz1353@semnan.ac.ir
M. Shahriari
e-mail: Mehri_shahriari70@semnan.ac.ir
A. Zarei
e-mail: a_zarei@semnan.ac.ir
E. Kashi
Department of Civil Engineering, Shahrood Branch, Islamic Azad
University, Shahrood, Iran
e-mail: e.kashi@iau-shahrood.ac.ir
marketing has increased in recent years and clusters
created around topics such as marketing strategies, ad-
vertising and video ads, ethical issues, advertising mes-
sage components, neuroscience in marketing, economics
and consumer behavior, and decision making and brand
selection. The study shows that the researchers’ attention
is moving from the concepts and principles of the use of
neuroscience in marketing, economics and consumer
behavior to design and develop marketing strategies
using neuroscience.
Keywords Neuro-marketing . Meta- analysis . Text
mining . Clustering
Introduction
Having the ability to read the minds of customers is a
dream for all marketers, Marketing research tries to find
out what’s going on in the minds of consumers or the
black box in order to conquer complex and constantly
changing customer behaviors. While we assume the
consumer buys a product for performance or price, the
consumer’s brain says something different [1]. Modern
marketing researchers have begun to study the factors
affecting consumer decision from a multi-disciplinary
point of view in order to understand the environment of
consumer decision making and consumer behavior [2].
neuro-marketing is an interdisciplinary topic on the
boundary between neuroscience, psychology and mar-
keting and focuses on assessing consumer awareness and
emotional responses to various marketing stimuli [3].
 M. Shahriari et al.

The main goal of Marketing Specialists is to guide,
design and deliver products that are tailored to consumer
preferences [4]. In consumer behavior research, in order
to study consumer preferences, demand and purchasing
purposes are used by methods such as interview, ques-
tionnaire, video test, and observation that These methods
examine only the superficial and consciously aspect of
consumers, in modern marketing, unconscious consumer
behavior is assessed using neural imaging tools [5]. The
business world considers neuro-marketing techniques as
a better predictor of classic marketing techniques in
predicting consumer behavior [6]. Neurology techniques
are a useful tool for businesses to obtain more accurate
information for creating competitive strategies and ben-
efits that lead to better market positioning [7]. recently,
neuro-marketing means using neural imaging techniques
for selling products, and some agencies use it as a
solution for marketing problems [8].
Similar researches on the subject of research can be
found in the research of Solnais et al. [9] They conduct-
ed a cluster analysis in the field of consumer
neuroscience, And the clusters were about deci-
sions, rewards, memory and emotions. In Solnais
et al. [9] research Clusters have been studied and
labeled from behavioral point of view, but in this
research, neuroscience has been studied in the fields of
marketing science and clusters are labeled from the
point of view of marketing.
In the past three decades, neuroscience research has
made remarkable progress and the research com-
munity and ethics have paid particular attention to
neuro-genetic research, brain banking, and neuro-
logical studies [10]. Research published in the
field of neuromarketing has focused on academic
subjects, such as the nature of brain activity which
is influenced by consumer’s behavior and the ac-
curacy of brain prediction, and neuromarketing is a
real tool for business improvement. These researches
also examine application of neuromarketing in
packaging design, pricing, brand identity, and oth-
er marketing factors apart from the product and
how neural responses predict purchasing decisions
[11].
As regards the neuro-marketing was a relatively new
topic, and in recent years the attention of researchers has
increased in this field, according to research by re-
searchers in 2005 until 2011, the number of arti-
cles were 71 papers and from 2011 to 2018, more
than 240 articles were increased. By reviewing
scientific-academic articles, a comprehensive image
of the status of the activities and products of the
researchers can be found. Therefore, the purpose
of this study is to explain the trend of neuro-
marketing research over the years 2005 until 2017 and
to find the most popular research topics in recent years
in neuro-marketing.

Fig. 1 Steps covered in this study

Pre-processing Modelling
work
- Tokenize - algorithm K-
-Transform Means
cases - Select k values
-filter stop and inial
Springe words values of cluster
Sciencedirect -stem centers
Emerald
…

Neuro-markeng Root rankings

Consumer
Behavior - SAW
Ads - Semanc
Brand analysis in the
Preferences text
Ethic
...
...
The Meta-Analysis of Neuro-Marketing Studies: Past, Present and Future
Literature Review and Research Background
The term Bneuro-marketing^ was first introduced by
Alesmids in 2005 to describe studies related on the use
of neuroscience technologies in the marketing industry
[12]. neuro-marketing defines brain mechanism to un-
derstand consumer behavior to improve marketing strat-
egies [2]. The purpose of consumer neuroscience is
usage of Neuroscience Techniques and Theories and
Its Combination with Behavioral Theories, tested
models and designs from consumer psychology and
related field such as behavioral decision making sci-
ences for the development of physiological neurosis
for understanding consumer behavior [13]. neuro-
marketing can be used to better understand unconscious
responses and consumer preferences in fields such as
advertising previews on television [12, 14–16], radio,
online media [14] Choose design products [17],
Labeling or packaging [18] Publishing of magazines
and outdoor advertising, Taste and smell tests, political
campaigns [14], Sales strategies [19], the position on the
shelves [20] and brand preferences [21, 22].
Nervous imaging techniques can directly measure
human brain activity [23] that The most important tools
used in neuro-marketing are: Electroencephalography,
eye tracking and Functional magnetic resonance imag-
ing (FMRI) [13]. Electroencephalography examines
electrical activity in the brain and is used in the evalu-
ation of advertising [24]. Eye tracking with the diagno-
sis of eye position, visual acuity, eye movement and
visual alignment in cognitive activities is an effective
tool for empirical psychology and neuropsychological
research, and it is very useful in analyzing the
Diagram 1 Selected articles of 70
the present research based on their
publication year 60
50
40
30
20
10
0
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Table 1 Values for Davies-Bouldin index based on number of
clusters
Number of cluster 2 3 4 5 6
Davies–Bouldin index 7.094 6.780 5.673 6.618 5.662
recognition of selective behavior and perceptual deci-
sion making [25]. Functional magnetic resonance imag-
ing reflects brain responses to marketing stimuli through
brain blood flow [16].
As neuromarketing has attracted much attention, it
has been criticized as well. Some critics believe that
advertisers may use it as a buy button; in theory, the
buy button is able to determine how consumers behave
by activating that part of the brain responsible for the
final decision [26]. However, some critics rejected this
idea because all the neurological and cognitive process-
es associated with making a purchase are influenced by
several factors and are not limited to one factor [27].
Other critics argue that neuromarketing activities ulti-
mately threaten individual autonomy [28]. Since com-
panies are seeking to increase their profits, it is likely
that they will ignore any interference with privacy and
freedom of choice of their consumers [29]. Another
view argues that neural techniques cannot be used for
measuring the real behavior of people and shows the
physiological evidence of behavior [27].
The volume and diversity of scientific literature is
expanding every day and the basis for future develop-
ment is archived in great detail with scientific literature,
Data mining discovers information that is hidden in
scientific literature and is not accessible by simple sta-
tistical techniques [30]. Text mining is one of the data
 M. Shahriari et al.

Table 2 The root word ranking in the first cluster

Word (Root) Cluster center Total occurrence Occurrence in document TF-IDF Weight Rank

Custom 0.070055 103 43 0.027599 0.472493 4

Product 0.068214 291 118 0.042244 0.700096 3
Consum 0.054561 628 192 0.053255 0.926591 1
Percept 0.054025 98 48 0.028221 0.422259 6
Market 0.053492 623 207 0.049006 0.918952 2
Packag 0.050123 46 16 0.018838 0.30494 9
Strategi 0.048583 72 38 0.025095 0.365735 8
Data 0.04561 115 59 0.028321 0.41275 7
fMRI 0.045519 118 53 0.035163 0.43849 5
Price 0.044765 44 22 0.017535 0.286153 10

mining branches whose purpose is to extract knowledge
from unstructured text data [31]. Text mining techniques
include text categorization, summarization, topic recog-
nition, concept extraction, search and retrieval, cluster-
ing of documents, etc. [32].
Methodology
In this research, the text-mining, clustering technique
and multi-attribute decision-making technique were
used to analyze the data. At first, a total of 394 articles
were selected between 2005 and 2017 using the key-
word Bneuro-marketing^ in databases such as Science
Direct, IEEE, Springer, Wiley, Taylor & Francis,
Emerald, Web of Science, ProQuest. Through the re-
view of the title, abstracts and keywords of the articles,
and at various stages of the screening of the articles, the
researchers selected 311 articles related to the neuro-
marketing topic to carry out the text mining process.
After that, the preprocessing of the data stage was per-
formed. At that stage, the tasks such as Tokenization,
transform cases (converting uppercase to small), filter
stop words, and stem were performed. The purpose of
tokenization is to discover words in a sentence and
identify meaningful keywords [33]. In the next step,
using non-hierarchical cluster analysis (k-mean), the
number of optimum clusters was obtained according to
Davis-Bouldin’s index. Then, in order to rank and de-
termine the most important roots in each cluster, using
the four criteria of the total occurrence, the occurrence in
the document, Term Frequency-Inverse Document
Frequency (TF-IDF) and the values of the cluster centers
from one of the most widely used multi-criteria sub-sets
of techniques A Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) has
been used. In this method, it is possible to prioritize
options by calculating the weight of the indexes. In this
study, we assumed the weights of the criteria to be equal.

Diagram 2 First cluster articles

based on publication year
25

20

15

10

0
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
The Meta-Analysis of Neuro-Marketing Studies: Past, Present and Future

Table 3 The root word ranking in the second cluster

Word (Root) Cluster center Total occurrence Occurrence in document TF-IDF Weight Rank

Advertis 0.133134 322 107 0.056134 1 1

Commerci 0.112124 169 64 0.038676 0.663538 3
Emotion 0.101915 265 89 0.048706 0.821984 2
Video 0.078673 64 22 0.02084 0.341639 7
Televis 0.064124 41 14 0.0171811 0.264277 8
Signal 0.061785 76 39 0.022781 0.367607 5
Watch 0.052874 42 19 0.013933 0.238339 9
Memori 0.050423 73 38 0.023005 0.3426 6
Respons 0.04624 189 97 0.032137 0.603331 4
Pleasent 0.043373 36 16 0.014856 0.212945 10

After collecting the data, the decision matrix is formed
and the values of the matrix are unscaled. Finally,
by multiplying the weights in the matrix rows, we
obtain the column matrix and ranked the roots by
sorting the elements based on the largest value to
the smallest value. Figure 1 shows the stages of
the present study.
Data Analysis
Descriptive Statistics
Review selected articles in terms of publishing year can
be remarkable in many aspects. Analyzing the slope of
the production of articles related to neuro-marketing
suggests that attention to this issue is increasing with a
slight slope and the importance this field has reached its
peak with publication 60 papers in 2017. Diagram 1
shows the selected articles of the present research based
on their publication year.
Non-hierarchical Cluster Analysis (K-Mean)
The clustering of the components is such that the mem-
bers in the same clusters has the highest similarity and
the highest differences from the other clusters [34]. To
find the optimum k, the k-mean algorithm was imple-
mented with an input of k = 2 to k = 6. Then we used the
Davis-Bouldin index to determine the number of opti-
mum clusters. The Davis-Bouldin index calculates the
average of the similarity between each cluster with the
most similar cluster, the lower the index, the better
clusters are produced. Table 1 shows the Davis
Bouldin index values based on the k (number) of
different clusters.

Diagram 3 Second cluster

articles based on publication year
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
 M. Shahriari et al.

Table 4 The root word ranking in the third cluster

Word (Root) Cluster center Total occurrence Occurrence in document TF-IDF Weight Rank

Ethic 0.368783 111 38 0.040837 0.521952 4

Challeng 0.115998 42 28 0.01966 0.216731 7
Technolog 0.100723 99 56 0.032577 0.32041 6
Privaci 0.092607 25 10 0.012694 0.141343 9
Advertis 0.076541 322 107 0.056134 0.559299 3
Polit 0.070127 27 13 0.013167 0.132631 10
Market 0.069048 623 207 0.049006 0.763069 1
Compani 0.066523 51 36 0.019926 0.19762 8
Consum 0.064116 628 192 0.053255 0.762527 2
Imag 0.05989 172 87 0.039304 0.389189 5

Based on the Davis-Bouldin Index, which is present-
ed in Table 1, Number of clusters, 6 was considered.
Subsequently, in each cluster, 10 words sorted by
SAW index rating, along with the cluster center,
the total occurrence, occurrence in the document,
Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency, the
frequency of the document and its final weight are
presented.
First Cluster (Marketing Strategies) This cluster
accounted for 32% (101 articles) of neuro-marketing
articles, the most important words in this cluster are
the roots of consum, market and product. The analysis
of the words of the first cluster indicates the importance
of neuro-marketing in marketing strategies, including
product and pricing. Consumer Neuroscience studies
how the brain is physiologically influenced by market-
ing strategies [35]. One of the factors that can affect
consumer purchasing behavior is price and customers
perceive price as a product of quality [36]. Packaging,
communication and product display also play an impor-
tant role in the consumer’s emotional state and purchas-
ing choices [13]. According to the words of the
first cluster, it can be labeled Bmarketing
strategies^. In Table 2, the root word ranking in
the first cluster is shown.
The slope of producing articles related to the first
cluster indicates that attention to this issue is increasing
and in 2016, the importance of this issue has peaked
with the publication of 22 papers. Diagram 2 shows the
trend in the articles in the first cluster based on publica-
tion year.
Second Cluster (Ads & Video Commercial) This cluster
contains 25% (79 articles) of articles in the neuro-
marketing field. In this cluster, ads, emotions, and

Diagram 4 Third cluster articles

based on publication year
8

0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
The Meta-Analysis of Neuro-Marketing Studies: Past, Present and Future

Table 5 The root word ranking in the fourth cluster

Word (Root) Cluster center Total occurrence Occurrence in document TF-IDF Weight Rank

Visual 0.274903 86 39 0.02644 0.525647 2

Eyetrack 0.247774 61 25 0.024927 0.442116 4
Music 0.125751 28 10 0.009772 0.202984 8
Advertis 0.076284 322 107 0.056134 0.819374 1
Human 0.062506 108 60 0.030549 0.416934 5
Messag 0.060348 36 22 0.016251 0.206609 7
Appeal 0.060201 26 11 0.015381 0.169136 9
Electroencephalographi 0.051489 45 32 0.018015 0.236762 6
Compon 0.51211 21 15 0.007801 0.132667 10
Cognit 0.48414 122 74 0.030789 0.448766 3

commercials are the most important words. The collec-
tion of articles in this cluster identifies emotions and
stimuli in advertisements and television commercials.
Neuro-marketing is part of the applied neuroscience that
is dedicated to analyzing brain responses to promotional
stimuli [37]. Commercial ads and promotions play a
significant role in increasing consumers’ desire to buy,
increase awareness of a product and improve the
corporate image [38]. According to the words of
the second cluster, it can be labeled B Ads & Video
commercial B. In Table 3, the root word ranking in the
second cluster is shown.
The slope of producing articles related to the second
cluster indicates that attention to this issue is increasing
and in 2015, the importance of this issue has peaked
with the publication of 18 papers. Diagram 3 shows the
trend in the articles in the second cluster based on
publication year.
Third Cluster (Ethical Issues) About 9% (28 articles) of
papers are in the third cluster and the most important
words in the third cluster are the words’ root of market,
consum, advertis and ethic issues. In fact, there are
articles in this cluster that have studied professional
ethics and ethical concerns in neuro-marketing and ad-
vertising. The neuroethics approach is used to analyze
some of the concepts of neuroscience to provide the
necessary grounds for examining the potential impact
of neuroscience on topics such as mind / brain relation-
ships, awareness measures, personal responsibility, and
freedom among others [39]. Racine and Iles [10] point-
ed out the important ethical issues for neural imaging,
including incidental findings and informed consent, pri-
vacy, justice in recruitment and cohort selection coer-
cion and confidentiality, decisional capacity and vulner-
able population stigma and discrimination, scientific
value, conflict of interest, and transfer of knowledge.

Diagram 5 Fourth cluster

articles based on publication year
8

0
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
 M. Shahriari et al.

Table 6 The root word ranking in the fifth cluster

Word (Root) Cluster center Total occurrence Occurrence in document TF-IDF Weight Rank

Neurosci 0.168953 366 149 0.052105 0.820253 3

Economi 0.114671 111 56 0.031998 0.431708 6
Consum 0.093976 628 192 0.053255 0.87094 1
Market 0.093759 623 207 0.049006 0.866795 2
Scienc 0.09274 60 47 0.025083 0.335627 10
Behavior 0.084862 259 137 0.037549 0.570403 5
Neuroimag 0.081117 83 46 0.029486 0.347043 9
Brain 0.074611 365 159 0.042638 0.647893 4
Develop 0.062837 108 77 0.028097 0.360866 8
Cognit 0.061012 122 74 0.030789 0.372751 7

Application of technology that examines the human
brain poses significant ethical issues. These concerns
fall into two categories: [28].
1. Protecting various groups that may be harmed or
abused through neuromarketing.
2. Protecting consumer autonomy, obtaining informed
consent, and protecting the privacy of those whose
brain function is being studied.
Regarding ethical issues and debates on neuro-mar-
keting, the concept of human dignity should be the basis
for ethical principles such as independence, autonomy,
privacy, confidentiality, protection of vulnerable groups,
reliability, and honest interpretation of research findings
[23]. According to the words of the third cluster, it can
be labeled Bethical issues^. In Table 4, the root word
ranking in the third cluster is shown.
The slope of producing articles related to the third
cluster indicates that attention to this issue is increasing
and in 2015, the importance of this issue has peaked
with the publication of 7 papers. Diagram 4 shows the
trend in the articles in the third cluster based on publi-
cation year.
Fourth Cluster (Advertising Message Components) Six
percent (18 articles) of the articles studied belong to the
fourth cluster, the most important words of this cluster
from the roots of advertis, visual, cognit and eye track.
Neuro-marketing is a combination of nerve imaging
technologies with marketing art in understanding uncon-
scious responses in marketing activities [1]. Articles re-
lated this cluster refer to the components of an advertising
message, such as music and visual stimuli, on human
emotions. Which musical stimuli through one of the most
important tools used to evaluate advertisements,

Diagram 6 Fifth cluster articles

based on publication year
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
The Meta-Analysis of Neuro-Marketing Studies: Past, Present and Future

Table 7 The root word ranking in the sixth cluster

Word (Root) Cluster center Total occurrence Occurrence in document TF-IDF Weight Rank

Brand 0.472318 394 86 0.070025 0.932203 1

Name 0.109022 49 19 0.015672 0.185002 10
Categori 0.099884 55 23 0.01647 0.195298 9
Prefer 0.092237 127 54 0.031479 0.356199 5
Product 0.081928 291 118 0.042244 0.628829 2
Choic 0.07786 110 44 0.029849 0.310794 6
Cortex 0.060443 66 34 0.020822 0.220242 8
Process 0.06032 209 110 0.03299 0.515374 3
Memori 0.058355 73 38 0.023005 0.239846 7
Decision 0.058306 187 95 0.033899 0.471814 4

electroencephalography [24–38], And visual stimu-
li are usually evaluated by eye tracking. In
Table 5, the root word ranking in the fourth cluster
is shown.
Diagram 5 shows that the attention and use of neural
techniques has increased in determining the components
of advertising messages in recent years.
The Fifth Cluster (Neuroscience in Marketing, Econom-
ics and Consumer Behavior) This cluster contains 17%
(54 articles) of articles in the neuro-marketing field. The
most important words in this cluster are from the root of
consum, market, and neurosci. The analysis of words in
the fifth cluster shows the importance of paying atten-
tion to neuroscience and identifying the human brain in
identifying consumer behavior, marketing, and econom-
ics. In Table 6, the root word ranking in the fifth cluster
is shown.
The slope of the production of papers in the fifth
cluster shows that attention to this issue has fluctuated
in different years. and in 2017, the importance of this
issue has peaked with the publication of 9 papers.
Diagram 6 shows the trend in the articles in the fifth
cluster based on publication year.
The Sixth Cluster (Decision Making Process and Brand
Selection) The sixth cluster contains 10% (31 articles)
of the articles reviewed in the field of neuro-marketing.
In this cluster, brand, product, and decision making
process are the most important words. The brand creates
a personality product and it effects on consumer deci-
sions and branded products are more intrusive than
unnamed products [40]. From the neuro-marketing ap-
plications are how to respond to brand [4, 8, 22] and
brand preferences [21]. From a psychological point of
view, brand development assessment can be considered

Diagram 7 Sixth cluster articles

based on publication year
8

0
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
 M. Shahriari et al.

Diagram 8 Popular topics in the

years 2005–2011 2005-2011

decision making process and brand selecon

Neuroscience in Markeng, Economics and

Consumer Behavior

adversing message components

ethical issues

Ads & Video commercials

Markeng Strategies

0 5 10 15 20 25

as a classification process [41]. In Table 7, the root word
ranking in the sixth cluster is shown.
The slope of producing articles related to the sixth
cluster indicates that attention to this issue is increasing
and in 2011, the importance of this issue has peaked
with the publication of 7 papers. Diagram 7 shows the
trend in the articles in the sixth cluster based on publi-
cation year.
Diagram 1 is used to determine the cluster with the
most articles in it and considering the first mutation in
2012, we studied the research before 2005 to 2011 and
from 2012 to 2017. Diagram 8 shows the number of
articles according to the clusters defined in 2005 to 2011.
As shown in Diagram 8, the cluster related to neuro-
science in marketing, economics and consumer behav-
ior during this period has the highest number of articles,
it appears because of the emergence of neuro-marketing
and its use in identifying consumer behavior in 2005.
Diagram 9 shows the popular topics for the period
2012–2017. As shown in Diagram 9, in the 2012–2017,
the cluster BMarketing Strategies^ has the largest num-
ber of articles.
Discussion and Conclusion
Marketers need to understand the unconscious minds of
consumers in order to satisfy consumers’ needs Because
most cognitive processes take place in the unconscious
mind and consumers can not say what they want.
Therefore, the use of consumer neurological techniques
may be beneficial, which has attracted the attention of
researchers in recent years. In this study, using text-
mining techniques, hidden patterns and rules in neuro-
marketing research articles were analyzed. The results
of this study are descriptive statistics, clustering, and the

Diagram 9 Popular topics in the

years 2012–2017 2012-2017

decision making process and brand selecon

Neuroscience in Markeng, Economics and

Consumer Behavior

adversing message components

ethical issues

Ads and Video Commercials

Markeng Strategies

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
The Meta-Analysis of Neuro-Marketing Studies: Past, Present and Future
trend of studies in the neuro-marketing field, which is
discussed below.
The analysis of articles in the field of neuro-market-
ing, from the descriptive statistics aspect, represents an
ascending slope and an increasing interest in this topic in
academic research. From 2005 to 2011, the number of
articles was 71, and since 2012, the number of articles
has exceeded 240 articles.
The results of clustering of articles in neuro-
marketing demonstrate the use of neural science in
various marketing topics. In the first cluster, there are
articles that examine the use of neuro-marketing in
designing and developing marketing strategies, the sec-
ond cluster contains articles that are related to ads and
video commercials, Development of neuromarketing
research poses significant ethical issues, such as con-
sumer protection, security, consumer autonomy and pri-
vacy, including those that need to be addressed in neu-
rological research. Researches in the third cluster, la-
beled BEthical Issues,^ explore this issue, the fourth
cluster consists of articles focusing on the use of
neuro-marketing in the design of the components of
advertising messages, including visual components
and music, The fifth cluster is a series of articles that
focus more on the concepts and applications of neuro-
science in marketing, economics and consumer behav-
ior and he sixth cluster also focuses on the use of neural
techniques in the decision making process of brand
selection of a product.
As derived from the definition of neuromarketing,
and according to Farah’s research findings, the ultimate
goal of neuromarketing is to improve business and
marketing strategies. Most companies use neurological
tools to formulate company strategies for advertising,
positioning, and pricing products using consumer psy-
chological research [11], which has been the leading
research findings in this regard. The study trend of the
papers suggests that in the period from 2005 to 2011,
most papers focused on the application of neuroscience
in marketing, economics and consumer behavior. Given
the fact that the neural marketing topic was introduced
in 2005, most researchers have in the past introduced the
concepts of neuroscience and its application in various
fields of marketing, economics and consumer behavior.
Also in 2012 there will be the first jump toward this
field. The observed trend illustrates the extent of neuro-
science in the field of marketing sciences, whose path to
introducing neuroscience in consumer and marketing
behavior and economics toward the design of the
advertising messages components and video commer-
cials, and then the largest contribution to the design and
develop of marketing strategies. Given this trend, we
can predict the future path of neuro-marketing toward
design and develop marketing strategies.
As stated by Farah [11], in the eighteenth century,
natural sciences have been a way of perceiving the
world around us, and in the twenty-first century, it is
neuroscience’s responsibility. With respect to the ever-
increasing advance in neuroscience and its extension in
various sciences, such as marketing and business invest-
ment in neuromarketing, its usage has been inevitable.
Like any other technologies, neuroscience technology
has its own advantages and challenges. Although it has
many benefits in regard to understanding the behavior of
individuals in different aspects, one of the most impor-
tant challenges is relevant to ethical issues (i.e., preserv-
ing privacy and confidentiality, protecting vulnerable
groups, and honest interpretation of research findings).
In fact, the concept of human dignity should be the
cornerstone of ethics. Accordingly, it is suggested to
researchers that with due to ethical issues conduct their
research toward the top topics in recent years and inves-
tigate the possibility of entering neuroscience into other
field of marketing science. Given the critique of the
neuromarketing topic that has challenged the field, con-
duct marketing studies on suggestion for adjusting these
challenges and concerns.
Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to
jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional
affiliations.
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