Looking through blue glasses: bioelectrical measures to assess the awakening after a calm situation

From E-Commerce to the Metaverse: A Neuroscientific Analysis of Digital Consumer Behavior

The growing interest in consumer behavior in the digital environment is leading scholars and companies to focus on consumer behavior and choices on digital platforms, such as the metaverse. On this immersive digital shopping platform, consumer neuroscience provides an optimal opportunity to explore consumers' emotions and cognitions. In this study, neuroscience techniques (EEG, SC, BVP) were used to compare emotional and cognitive aspects of shopping between metaverse and traditional e-commerce platforms. Participants were asked to purchase the same product once on a metaverse platform (Second Life, SL) and once via an e-commerce website (EC). After each task, questionnaires were administered to measure perceived enjoyment, informativeness, ease of use, cognitive effort, and flow. Statistical analyses were conducted to examine differences between SL and EC at the neurophysiological and self-report levels, as well as between different stages of the purchase process. The results show that SL elicits greater cognitive engagement than EC, but it is also more mentally demanding, with a higher workload and more memorization, and fails to elicit a strong positive emotional response, leading to a poorer shopping experience. These findings provide insights not only for digital-related consumer research but also for companies to improve their metaverse shopping experience. Before investing in the platform or creating a digital retail space, companies should thoroughly analyze it, focusing on how to enhance users' cognition and emotions, ultimately promoting a better consumer experience. Despite its limitations, this pilot study sheds light on the emotional and cognitive aspects of metaverse shopping and suggests potential for further research with a consumer neuroscience approach in the metaverse field.

The Role of the Emotional Sequence in the Communication of the Territorial Cheeses: A Neuromarketing Approach

Over the past few years, many studies have shown how territoriality can be considered a driver for purchasing agri-food products. Products with certification of origin are perceived as more sustainable, safer and of better quality. At the same time, producers of traditional products often belong to small entities that struggle to compete with large multinational food corporations, having less budget to allocate to product promotion. In this study, we propose a neuromarketing approach, showing how the use of these techniques can help in choosing the most effective commercial in terms of likeability and ability to activate mnemonic processes. Two commercials were filmed for the purpose of this study. They differed from each other in terms of emotional sequence. The first aimed primarily at eliciting positive emotions derived from the product description. The second aimed to generate negative emotions during the early stages, highlighting the negative consequences of humans' loss of contact with nature and tradition and then eliciting positive emotions by presenting cheese production using traditional techniques as a solution to the problem. Based on the literature on the emotional sequences in social advertising, we hypothesised that the second commercial would generate an overall better emotional reaction and activate mnemonic processes to a greater extent. Our results partially support the research hypotheses, providing useful insights both to marketers and for future research on the topic.

Yellow (Lens) Better: Bioelectrical and Biometrical Measures to Assess Arousing and Focusing Effects

Colours can induce several psychological effects, conditioning perceptions, cognitive/emotional states and human performances. In this exploratory study we investigated the effect of a yellow light exposure, obtained filtering the ambient light with coloured glasses, on the human's psychological functioning. In particular we wanted to assess if people are more able to focus when exposed to a yellow light. We recorded EEG, SC, HR and gaze-related data from 16 subjects (50% split in experimental and control group) during the execution of a reactivity test (the Hazard Perception Test, HPT). Compared with the control group, the experimental group showed increases in concentration, focus, visual attention and arousal, as measured by increases of first fixation duration and Beta over-Alpha ratio (BAR) as well as by decreases of distraction, workload, and number of gaze revisits.

Job Assessment Through Bioelectrical Measures: A Neuromanagement Perspective

During recruitment, human resource departments face two challenges: finding the right people for the job and attracting talent. Therefore, the hiring process requires both the ability to communicate a good company brand image and to understand the characteristics and potential of candidates. In this study, we used a neuroscientific approach to measure the experience of candidates during a job interview. The experiment involved 30 participants that individually took part in a job interview lasting 40 min. During the experiment, their engagement and stress levels were measured in real-time with skin conductance and electroencephalographic (EEG) data. From the results, we identified both the most stressful phases (the second and the fourth parts, relating to the explanation of the job and remuneration) and the most engaging phases (the first and the third phases, relating to the presentation of the company and the explanation of the career process) of the interview, suggesting implications for the assessment process. This study is a contribution to the field of neuromanagement, as a neuroscientific approach was applied to management issues in light of work and organizational psychology.

Assessing the Emotional Response in Social Communication: The Role of Neuromarketing

Social advertising is designed to have an impact on the behavior of the target audience to improve the welfare of both the individuals and the society. The challenge for social marketing is to respond to the exchange process in a social perspective, considering that non-profit actions are perceived as intangible since they deal with services. As donations, the neuroscience applied to consumer behavior is an added value since it offers elements explaining the reactions of the individuals to emotional contents. Understanding the emotions in the moment in which they are felt allows to understand the experimentation of a message by individuals and to understand the possibility that the message can change the behavior of the target audience. The aim of the study is to assess the effectiveness of the Unicef bequest campaign in terms of emotional response, comparing different creative proposals to optimize communication, applying neuromarketing tools to the social area. The experiment involved 70 participants (35 males; 35 females; mean age 68.94 years) and compared two different spots and flyers. The progeny factor was introduced to assess the different impacts of bequests depending on the presence or absence of potential heirs. The neuromarketing tools such as electroencephalography (EEG), skin conductance (SC), and eye-tracker were used for instrumentation purposes. Analysis of the two spots showed statistically significant differences in both the Approach-Withdrawal Index (AWI), for the cognitive involvement, and the SC, the emotional activation indicator, particularly for those not having children (target audience) and in a specific spot that linked the possibility to live after death. The detection of the emotional responses through neuromarketing tools, associated with the non-profit communication, resulted particularly effective and verified an increment of 35% of the donations. Analyses performed with neuromarketing techniques allowed to understand both emotional intensity and cognitive involvement and to understand the best solution, according to the target audience and the aim of Unicef.

Neurocoaching: exploring the relationship between coach and coachee by means of bioelectrical signal similarities

Coaching aims to unlock the human's potential, self-awareness and responsibility, improving the professional performances and the personal satisfaction. Its effectiveness is known to depend on the degree of bonding and mutual engagement of the coaching relationship. In this exploratory study we recorded synchronised EEG and SC data from both coach and coachee during 36 individual sessions, performed following 2 different coaching methods. Our principal aim was to investigate the temporal evolution of the bonding and the mutual engagement along the different steps of a session, by means of a "similarity" metric based on the DTW distance between signals (namely, S-TVM). We found significant differences between session phases for the EEG-related S-TVMs (BAR, BATR and AWI), with maximum values (defined as "tuning") all in the same phase, but differentiated between the two experiments. The results suggest a temporal concurrency of the engagement and emotional tunings, whose specific location seems to be a function of the coaching approach.