I.

Introduction: What is The Main Function of Neuroscience in

Marketing?

Neuroscience marketing is the application of neuroscience methods to marketing. It is a new

field of marketing which applies medical technologies to examine the brain’s responses to
marketing stimuli. Neuroscience marketing is essentially a method that helps companies to
explore customer buying decisions. Marketers utilize neuromarketing techniques to measure a
consumer’s preference based on the activities in parts of the brain and to explore why consumers
make the decisions they do. Neuroscience marketing includes the direct use of brain imaging,
scanning, or other brain activity measurement technology to measure a consumer’s reaction to
specific products, packaging, advertising, or other marketing stimuli. The brain responses
measured by these techniques may not be consciously perceived by the respondents; hence, this
information may be more revealing than self-reporting on surveys, in focus groups. With the
help of neuroscience, marketers design products and create advertisements much more
effectively. This chapter presents neuro-marketing techniques and how they enable marketers
to pre-established emotional influence, the practice of neuromarketing methods in advertising
and package design tactics. [1]
 II. The Main Neuromarketing Tools

Neuroscientific techniques applied to business and advertising research can be divided into
three categories:

1. Techniques that register brain physiological activity (of the central nervous system,
CNS).
2. Techniques that register other physiological activity (of the peripheral nervous
system, PNS).
3. Other techniques that register behavior and conduct. [2]

Figure : Neuroscientific Methods

Techniques That Register The Physiological Activity of The Brain (CNS):
o Electroencephalogram (EEG in neuromarketing)
o Functional Magnetic Resonance (fRMI in neuromarketing)
o Magnetoencephalography (MEG in neuromarketing)
o Positron-emission tomography (PET in neuromarketing)
o Steady State Topography (SST)

Techniques that register the physiological activity of the brain (SNC):

o Electrocardiogram (ECG in neuromarketing)
o Galvanic skin response (GSR in neuromarketing)
o Eye-tracking (Eye-tracking in neuromarketing)
o Electromyogram (EMG)
o Facial Coding in neuromarketing

Techniques that register behavior and conduct

o Implicit Response Test (IRT) in neuromarketing
o Indoor positioning techniques (Indoor-GPS in neuromarketing)

Figure [3] : NeuroMarketing Tools

 III. How to Use Electroencephalography (EEG) in Neuromarketing?

The electroencephalogram (EEG) is a very used technique in neuromarketing, and besides

being portable and relatively economical, provides valuable information on brain activity.
With this technique, the brain’s electrical activity is analyzed and registered by a headband or
helmet that has small sensors, which are placed on the scalp. This method detects changes in
the electrical currents of brain waves.

EEG offers a high temporal resolution for the detection of slight changes in brain activity
at relatively low costs. Therefore, for neuromarketing investigation, EEG is very useful
because it evaluates the value of a marketing stimulus, obtaining a series of metrics such as
atention, engagement, affective valence, and memorization.

IV. The Benefits and Restrictions of EEG

An electroencephalogram (EEG) is a test that detects electrical activity in your brain using
small, metal discs (electrodes) attached to your scalp. Your brain cells communicate via
electrical impulses and are active all the time, even when you're asleep. This activity shows
up as wavy lines on an EEG recording.
An EEG is one of the main diagnostic tests for epilepsy. An EEG can also play a role in
diagnosing other brain disorders.

An EEG can determine changes in brain activity that might be useful in diagnosing brain
disorders, especially epilepsy or another seizure disorder. An EEG might also be helpful for
diagnosing or treating the following disorders:

Brain tumor, brain damage from head injury, brain dysfunction that can have a variety of
causes (encephalopathy), inflammation of the brain (encephalitis), stroke, sleep disorders

An EEG might also be used to confirm brain death in someone in a persistent coma. A
continuous EEG is used to help find the right level of anesthesia for someone in a medically
induced coma.

Certain factors or conditions may interfere with the reading of an EEG test. These include:

 Low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) caused by fasting

 Body or eye movement during the tests (but this will rarely, if ever, significantly
interfere with the interpretation of the test)
 Lights, especially bright or flashing ones
 Certain medicines, such as sedatives
 Drinks containing caffeine, such as coffee, cola, and tea (while these drinks can
occasionally alter the EEG results, this almost never interferes significantly with the
interpretation of the test)
 Oily hair or the presence of hair spray[4]

V. How to Use an Eye Tracker in Neuromarketing

Eye tracking (ET) is a technique that measures and registers eye movements to identify the
position of the pupil by utilizing infrared light (which is completely innocuous). Otherwise
speaking, it follows the eye movements and registers gaze patterns of the participants. Eye-
trackers identify and register gaze patterns to explain the visual path as a response to a
specific stimulus and therefore obtain information on visual attention.

We can distinguish between several types of eye-tracker:

 Stationary eye-tracker: Placed on the lower part of a screen and is employed in

controlled or laboratory contexts.

 Eye-tracker glasses: Register the gaze pattern in real surroundings thanks to glasses
that incorporate an infrared camera.

 Eye-trackers in virtual reality glasses: novel technique that brings real contexts to the
lab, by immersing the participant in virtual surroundings.

 Eye-tracking through webcams: This type of eye-tracking employs a webcam, which

is an inexpensive and non-intrusive device. However, in comparison with light-based
eye-trackers, these are less precise and do not work well if the person is not in a well-
lit room (something difficult to control in online market studies, which are the main
application). Resolution and sensitivity to movement are low, requiring the participant
to maintain an unnatural posture.
Eye-tracking provides information on temporal processes, with high resolution, at a
reasonable cost. There is high acceptance from participants, and it is portable. Therefore,
unsurprisingly, eye-trackers are one of the most employed techniques in neuromarketing.

VI. The Benefits and Restrictions of Eye Tracker

Running a study with remote eye trackers means that you’re tied to a single laboratory, as
changing the surrounding environment would cause bias. Remote eye trackers track the eyes
only within certain limits, meaning that considerable head movements during a study will
break the eye tracker calibration and the measurement will fail. For example, studying
children can be challenging or nearly impossible with this kind of equipment.

Typically, this isn’t a problem if the measurement time is short, but respondents tend to have
a harder time concentrating for longer periods. One good thing is that gaze interactions can be
directly mapped onto the screen content because the gaze vector and content position on the
screen is known at every moment. However, the restrictions above make the usefulness of this
setup very limited. [5]
 VII. How to Use Facial Coding in Neuromarketing and Benefits

Facial coding (FC), similarly to the electromyogram, measures and registers the voluntary and
involuntary movements of facial muscles, but does not employ sensors. This is an indirect
measurement technology, and cannot measure the electrical response produced by muscle
contraction. The main difference is that it is not necessary to place sensors on the face of
participants because a camera is responsible for recording the facial microexpressions
(voluntary and involuntary), associated with specific emotional and cognitive states while
participants are exposed to investigation stimuli.

The greatest advantage of FC is that it is an inexpensive and portable technology, given that it
can be implemented with a webcam. Nevertheless, facial coding loses precision to measure
micromovements in comparison with EMG. FC is less intrusive but also less precise.

However, we must keep in mind that the reliability of these neuroscientific techniques
depends on different factors:

1. Quality of the technologies: reliability and precision to measure the specific

physiological activity.
 2. Data processing: algorithms translate physiological changes into cognitive or
emotional information. Also, they must be able to remove artifacts.

3. Context of use: not all technologies can be applied to all contexts. It is important to
verify whether technologies are mobile, comfortable, etc.

4. Experimental protocol: an inadequate procedure in neuroscience can give place to

random results or even the opposite of reality.

VIII. How To Use Functional Magnetic Resonance İmaging (FMRI) in

Neuromarketing

Functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) measures and maps brain activity through the
detection of changes associated with blood flow. In this method, participants lie in a bed and
with their heads surrounded by a scanner that tracks the variations in blood oxygenation in the
brain, which are correlated to neuronal activity (Bercea, 2012; Zurawicki, 2010).

A tridimensional view of the brain is also provided, which can distinguish each internal
cortical structure and its activity. In other words, small and deep structures of the brain can be
investigated. However, despite its high spatial resolution, it presents very low temporal
resolution. Also, it is a very expensive technique, restrictive and intrusive (the patient must lie
down and be still inside a machine) and not portable.

IX. The Benefits and Restrictions of fMRI

Thanks to the imaging systems, there is now a chance to make a very detailed examination of
the patient's area to be operated before the surgery. By using these systems, doctors reduce the
error rate, and with the advancement in imaging systems, new solutions can be developed for
many different diseases.

Although imaging systems have a very important place for human health, they also bring
some risks. These are the risk of radiation and the ionization of cells, the health of pregnant
women and their babies, to name a few. Some other problems about imaging systems are :
People with implants, particularly those containing iron, noise, nerve stimulation, contrast
agents, claustrophobia.

X. The Relation Between Neuromarketing And Advertising

“Neuromarketing” loosely refers to the measurement of physiological and neural signals to

gain insight into customers’ motivations, preferences, and decisions, which can help inform
creative advertising, product development, pricing, and other marketing areas. Brain scanning,
which measures neural activity, and physiological tracking, which measures eye movement
and other proxies for that activity, are the most common methods of measurement.
The two primary tools for scanning the brain are fMRI and EEG. The former (functional
magnetic resonance imaging) uses strong magnetic fields to track changes in blood flow
across the brain and is administered while a person lies inside a machine that takes continuous
measurements over time. An EEG (electroencephalogram) reads brain-cell activity using
sensors placed on the subject’s scalp; it can track changes in activity over fractions of a
second, but it does a poor job of pinpointing exactly where the activity occurs or measuring it
in deep, subcortical regions of the brain (where a lot of interesting activity takes place). An
fMRI can peer deep into the brain but is cumbersome, and it tracks activity only over the
course of several seconds, which may miss fleeting neural incidents. (Moreover, fMRI
machines are many times more expensive than EEG equipment, typically costing about $5
million with high overhead, versus about $20,000.)

Tools for measuring the physiological proxies for brain activity tend to be more affordable
and easier to use. Eye tracking can measure attention (via the eyes’ fixation points) and
arousal (via pupil dilation); facial-expression coding (reading the minute movement of
muscles in the face) can measure emotional responses; and heart rate, respiration rate, and
skin conductivity measure arousal.

Interest in consumer neuroscience took off in the mid-2000s, when business school
researchers started to demonstrate that advertising, branding, and other marketing tactics can
have measurable impacts on the brain. In 2004 researchers at Emory University served Coca-
Cola and Pepsi to subjects in an fMRI machine. When the drinks weren’t identified, the
researchers noted a consistent neural response. But when subjects could see the brand, their
limbic structures (brain areas associated with emotions, memories, and unconscious
processing) showed enhanced activity, demonstrating that knowledge of the brand altered
how the brain perceived the beverage. Four years later a team led by INSEAD’s Hilke
Plassmann scanned the brains of test subjects as they tasted three wines with different prices;
their brains registered the wines differently, with neural signatures indicating a preference for
the most expensive wine. In actuality, all three wines were the same. In another academic
study fMRI revealed that when consumers see a price may change their mental calculation of
value: When price was displayed before exposure to the product, the neural data differed from
when it was displayed after exposure, suggesting two different mental calculations: “Is this
product worth the price?” when the price came first, and “Do I like this product?” when the
product came first. [6]
 XI. The Relation Between Neuroscience And Effective Packaging Design

What are the most important insights from cognitive neurosciences that a packaging designer
should take into consideration to create more effective packages? Here are three tips.

What does make a package really stand out from the crowd? What materials should be used to
elicit certain behaviors, perceptions and emotions in the consumer? How can a container
affect our evaluation of its contents? How can a package contribute to brand loyalty?

The newborn field of “neurodesign” now tries to provide answers to these and more
questions, exploiting our knowledge on the functioning of the human brain for the design of
more effective products and packaging.

In the last few decades, cognitive neuroscience has made big progresses in the study of the
human mind and of the principles that concur to determine our behavior. Not surprisingly, this
knowledge has rapidly spread towards many other study fields, from economics to
engineering and marketing, leading to new brand disciplines, such as neuroeconomics and
neuromarketing.

The main idea in support of this trend is that, whenever there is a human user who interacts
with a product, service or object, it is vital to understand how his/her brain responds to such
situations. This helps us create better and more intuitive interactions and experiences.
Neuroscience now shows something that some intuitive designers, product engineers and
marketers have sensed a long time ago. That is, asking the user/consumer about his/her
opinions or ideas regarding a product is often misleading. [7]

XII. Conclusion

As we witness the miracle of the neuroscience in marketing, for sure we are

going to see more and more techniques of advertising and marketing which use
neuromarketing.

Dila Bıçakçıoğlu
 REFERENCES:
1. DOI :10.26650/B/SS05.2020.002.09-Neuroscience Marketing, Nicolas Hamelin, Talha
Harcar
2. https://www.bitbrain.com/blog/neuromarketing-research-techniques-tools
3. Innovations in Consumer Science: Applications of Neuro-Scientific Research Tools
4. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-
therapies/electroencephalogram-eeg
5. https://www.rdworldonline.com/why-and-how-researchers-can-benefit-from-eye-
tracking-in-virtual-
reality/#:~:text=Eye%20tracking%20makes%20it%20possible,more%20than%20peop
le%20can%20imagine.
6. https://hbr.org/2019/01/neuromarketing-what-you-need-to-know
7. https://www.packagingdigest.com/packaging-design/neurodesign-new-frontier-
packaging-and-product-design
Video Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfjx-_3AwDM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfjx-_3AwDM