The Meta-Analysis of Neuro-Marketing Studies: Past, Present and Future

A systematic review on EEG-based neuromarketing: recent trends and analyzing techniques

Neuromarketing is an emerging research field that aims to understand consumers' decision-making processes when choosing which product to buy. This information is highly sought after by businesses looking to improve their marketing strategies by understanding what leaves a positive or negative impression on consumers. It has the potential to revolutionize the marketing industry by enabling companies to offer engaging experiences, create more effective advertisements, avoid the wrong marketing strategies, and ultimately save millions of dollars for businesses. Therefore, good documentation is necessary to capture the current research situation in this vital sector. In this article, we present a systematic review of EEG-based Neuromarketing. We aim to shed light on the research trends, technical scopes, and potential opportunities in this field. We reviewed recent publications from valid databases and divided the popular research topics in Neuromarketing into five clusters to present the current research trend in this field. We also discuss the brain regions that are activated when making purchase decisions and their relevance to Neuromarketing applications. The article provides appropriate illustrations of marketing stimuli that can elicit authentic impressions from consumers' minds, the techniques used to process and analyze recorded brain data, and the current strategies employed to interpret the data. Finally, we offer recommendations to upcoming researchers to help them investigate the possibilities in this area more efficiently in the future.

Assessing functional impulsivity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy

Introduction

In neuromarketing, a recently developing, inter-disciplinary field combining neuroscience and marketing, neurophysiological responses have been applied to understand consumers' behaviors. While many studies have focused on explicit attitudes, few have targeted implicit aspects. To explore the possibility of measuring implicit desire for a product, we focused on functional impulsivity related to obtaining a product as a reward and devised a product-rewarded traffic light task (PRTLT). The PRTLT requires participants to take risks under time pressure in order for them to maximize rewards in the form of commercial products, with the brand of products being an independent variable. Thus, we explored the feasibility of applying a PRTLT in a neuromarketing context to implicitly differentiate between the perceived value of products and supported our data with neurophysiological evidence obtained using fNIRS to concurrently monitor cortical activation.

Methods

Thirty healthy students were asked to perform the PRTLT. We compared participants' functional impulsivity toward two different chocolate products that had obviously different values. Along with their behavioral responses, participants' cerebral hemodynamic responses during the PRTLT were measured using fNIRS covering the lateral prefrontal cortices and the neighboring regions. We conducted adaptive general linear model (GLM) analysis for hemodynamic responses. First, we identified the regions involved in the PRTLT. Second, we compared activation patterns between expensive and inexpensive conditions.

Results

Behavioral analysis confirmed that the expensive condition trended toward producing a higher PRTLT score than did the inexpensive condition. fNIRS neuroimaging analysis showed task-derived activation in the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and frontopolar cortex (FPC). Moreover, we found significant differences between expensive and inexpensive conditions in the cortical activations in the FPC and the left-DLPFC.

Conclusion

These results imply that the two products evoked different functional impulsivity, and the hemodynamic responses reflect that. Thus, we concluded that it is possible to observe differences in demand for products using a PRTLT that evokes functional impulsivity. The current study presents a new possibility in neuromarketing research of observing differences between consumers' covert attitudes toward commercially available products, possibly providing a neural basis related to hidden needs for some products.

A comparative review on neuroethical issues in neuroscientific and neuroethical journals

This study is a pilot literature review that compares the interest of neuroethicists and neuroscientists. It aims to determine whether there is a significant gap between the neuroethical issues addressed in philosophical neuroethics journals and neuroscience journals. We retrieved 614 articles from two specialist neuroethics journals (Neuroethics and AJOB Neuroscience) and 82 neuroethics-focused articles from three specialist neuroscience journals (Neuron, Nature Neuroscience, and Nature Reviews Neuroscience). We classified these articles in light of the neuroethical issue in question before we compared the neuroethical issues addressed in philosophical neuroethics with those addressed by neuroscientists. A notable result is a parallelism between them as a general tendency. Neuroscientific articles cover most neuroethical issues discussed by philosophical ethicists and vice versa. Subsequently, there are notable discrepancies between the two bodies of neuroethics literature. For instance, theoretical questions, such as the ethics of moral enhancement and the philosophical implications of neuroscientific findings on our conception of personhood, are more intensely discussed in philosophical-neuroethical articles. Conversely, neuroscientific articles tend to emphasize practical questions, such as how to successfully integrate ethical perspectives into scientific research projects and justifiable practices of animal-involving neuroscientific research. These observations will help us settle the common starting point of the attempt at "ethics integration" in emerging neuroscience, contributing to better governance design and neuroethical practice.

Elevating neuroscience literacy and an approach for physiologists

The field of neuroscience has made notable strides that have contributed to progress and change in a number of academic pursuits. However, the lack of understanding of basic neuroscience concepts among the general public is likely to hinder, and in some instances possibly even prevent, the appropriate application of scientific advancements to issues facing society today. Greater neuroscience literacy among the general public is necessary for the benefits of neuroscientific discovery to be fully realized. By actively enhancing neuroscience literacy, scientists can dispel falsehoods established by early research that harmed underrepresented communities, ensure that public conversations concerning neuroscience (e.g., legalization of psychotropic substances) revolve around facts, and empower individuals to make better health decisions. The widespread implementation of communication technologies and various forms of media indicate there are numerous means to engage classroom learners across disciplines and age cohorts and the public to increase neuroscience knowledge. Thus, it is not only necessary but timely that neuroscientists seek meaningful ways to bridge the widening knowledge gap with the public.

Summary of over Fifty Years with Brain-Computer Interfaces-A Review

Over the last few decades, the Brain-Computer Interfaces have been gradually making their way to the epicenter of scientific interest. Many scientists from all around the world have contributed to the state of the art in this scientific domain by developing numerous tools and methods for brain signal acquisition and processing. Such a spectacular progress would not be achievable without accompanying technological development to equip the researchers with the proper devices providing what is absolutely necessary for any kind of discovery as the core of every analysis: the data reflecting the brain activity. The common effort has resulted in pushing the whole domain to the point where the communication between a human being and the external world through BCI interfaces is no longer science fiction but nowadays reality. In this work we present the most relevant aspects of the BCIs and all the milestones that have been made over nearly 50-year history of this research domain. We mention people who were pioneers in this area as well as we highlight all the technological and methodological advances that have transformed something available and understandable by a very few into something that has a potential to be a breathtaking change for so many. Aiming to fully understand how the human brain works is a very ambitious goal and it will surely take time to succeed. However, even that fraction of what has already been determined is sufficient e.g., to allow impaired people to regain control on their lives and significantly improve its quality. The more is discovered in this domain, the more benefit for all of us this can potentially bring.

The Application of Neuromarketing Techniques in the Spanish Advertising Industry: Weaknesses and Opportunities for Development

Neuromarketing has aroused great interest in scientific research about consumer behavior and, consequently, in the advertising industry, which is searching for an alternative to traditional techniques for measuring efficacy. However, despite its development in the academic world, in the professional sector, its use is still very limited. The aim of this work was to find out the perception of advertising professionals as regards neuromarketing techniques for identifying its advantages and disadvantages compared to other research techniques, as well as the reasons why the use of neuromarketing is so much lower than expected in the Spanish market. The technique chosen for data gathering was the semi-structured interview, which made it possible to go into more depth with the subjects that came up. The interview, after a pre-selection of 100 professionals who matched the set criteria, was carried out individually, face-to-face, with a sample of 30 people with considerable professional experience in the field of marketing, sales communication, and market research; all of them belonged to leading companies from the sector. Once the information had been categorized into units with common themes, the results obtained were interpreted to explain how neuromarketing techniques are being used in the field of advertising. The results obtained led us to the conclusion that, even though neuromarketing provides more objective data and it is closer to what really happens to consumers when they are exposed to an advertising message, the ignorance of its true possibilities, the inability of suppliers of these techniques to transmit the value they add to research, its complexity, its high cost and time requirements explain why it has had scarce use in advertising research. The results revealed the real reasons for the rejection of neuromarketing techniques which, in turn, will make it possible to introduce both technological and formative solutions, allowing it to be incorporated into future research designs.