Course Readings

The course readings consist of two highly recommended materials: course compendium
that can be downloaded for FREE and a book that can be bought online.

Compendium
 Download Compendium

Recommended Book
Ramsøy (2015) Introduction to Neuromarketing & Consumer Neuroscience. Neurons Inc.
Publishers

 Buy Book - English

 Buy Book - Spanish

Genco S.J, Pohlmann A.P., Steidl P. (2013). Neuromarketing for Dummies. Mississauga,
ON ; John Wiley & Sons Canada Ltd.

 Buy Book

Learning Objectives
In general
• to acquire knowledge about how the brain responds to advertising, including attention,
emotions, memory and decision making

• to reflect on the implication of the modern view of the brain on marketing/advertising

• to discuss the optimal integration of advertising pre-testing and agency-client relationship
in the creative process

• to reflect on the utility of brand tracking research, brand building research, and the
research process applicable at different stages in the brand strategy formulation and
execution.

Specifically

• select an appropriate case for applying theories and models from the course

• identify relevant theories and models (from brain science and/or marketing)
to describe and solve a specific case

• structure and analyse data by using adapted theories and models

• draw conclusions from this analysis and discuss their implications for
marketing/advertising strategies
Fig. : A model of decisions and branding effects

Consumer Aberrations

" One approach to understand consumer choice is to study cases in which those behaviors
go awry. What happens to a consumer when he starts gambling, or what happens in
compulsive buying disorder (“shopaholics”)? Besides allowing us to better understand and
treat those disorders, this knowledge also allows us to better understand the mechanisms
of choice in normal consumer behavior.

Here, we focus on a few selected aberrant consumer behaviors that highlight some of the
basic mechanisms of choice. This also provides an important and often forgotten aspect of
consumer neuroscience and Neuromarketing: the knowledge and insights we are gaining
can be used to help sufferers in exactly the kinds of daily situations that things go wrong.

Finally, the aspect of aberrant consumer behaviors also suggests that consumer behavior
and marketing can be used as an important and viable path to understand the basic brain
mechanisms of choice. Thus, cognitive neuroscientists should look to consumer behavior
with a more keen interest than we have seen until now. "

Neuroetics of Neuromarketing

" While consumer neuroscience and Neuromarketing has many proponents, others are also
concerned that the use of neuroscience in business will allow unprecedented access to
consumers’ minds, opening the floodgates to pure manipulation of consumers.
As always, there are two sides of a coin. Neuromarketing both has its promises and uses,
but also its perils and problems. To get to a valid use of neuroscience in marketing and
consumer insights, we need to face these challenges and accommodate the practices
accordingly. While academic researchers are (or should be) well versed in ethics codes of
conduct, this is often not the case for commercial uses of neuroscience. "

Emotions & Feelings

" One of the important concepts in marketing and consumer insights is emotions, or
feelings...? What is really the basic difference between emotions and feelings? Are they just
two concepts for the same phenomenon, or do they reveal something more fundamental
about how our minds are organized?
To make matters worse, emotions and feelings are used interchangeably in academia and
industry. Here, I will tease apart what the basic differences are, and serve some central
articles pertaining to this distinction.

Put simple, emotions can be said to be neural and bodily responses to inner or outer
events. your startle response to a sudden noise or sweating in your palms when nervous
are good examples of emotional responses. Feelings, on the other hand, should be
reserved to the process of having a conscious experience of being in a particular emotional
state. This distinction suggests that we can have many emotional responses without an
accompanying feeling, but we cannot have feelings without an accompanying emotion. "

Wanting & Liking

4b. Wanting & Liking , NEUROMARKETING COMPENDIUM, 2nd ed p.309 to

p.354.pdfPDF File

"A recurring theme in this compendium is whether choices are conscious or unconscious.
Both from psychology and neuroscience, we know that we have (at least) two different
motivation systems. Some scholars have distinguished between a wanting system and a
liking system. The wanting system operates unconsciously, and is known to reflect the
operations of a separate, deep brain system, such as the basal ganglia.

Conversely, the liking system is related to our overt, conscious hedonic experience, and is
reflected in our verbal utterances. This system is thought to be based on the brain’s
prefrontal regions, such as the orbitofrontal cortex, and possibly the anterior insula.

In most cases, what you want is what you like. But in some instances, those processes
break down. Consumer choice is packed with such examples. Think of the choice of eating
a chocolate while on a diet. You feel the urge for a snack and the sugar boost, but
consciously think it’s a bad thing to do. Which of the two will win?

This is a tell tale sign of consumer motivation, and why the whole concept of
Neuromarketing and consumer neuroscience makes sense. By only asking people, we only
have access to the liking system. By exploring the hidden mental value operations of the
brain, we can also understand the wanting system. "

Study example
A neuroscience study by Ericsson ConsumerLab captured objective
reactions to varied levels of network performance while using a smartphone. It
revealed that under time constraints delays in web page load times and video
streaming can be as stressful as watching a horror movie.
Link to the report: Ericsson Mobility Report