Neuromarketing is a commercial marketing communication field that applies neuropsychology to market research, studying consumers' sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective responses to marketing stimuli. So far, neuromarketing is still an expensive approach that requires advanced equipment and technology such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), motion capture for eye-tracking, and the electroencephalogram.

The potential benefits to marketers include more efficient and effective marketing campaigns and strategies, fewer product and campaign failures, and ultimately the manipulation of the real needs and wants of people to suit the needs and wants of marketing interests.

Collecting information on how the target market would respond to a product is the first step involved for organizations advertising a product. Traditional methods of market research include focus groups or sizeable surveys used to evaluate features of the proposed product. Conventional research techniques used in this type of study are in general the measurement of cardiac electrical activity (ECG) and electrical activity of the dermis (AED) of subjects. However, it results in an incompatibility between market research findings and the actual behavior exhibited by the target market at the point of purchase. Human decision-making is both a conscious and non-conscious process in the brain, and while this method of research succeeded in gathering explicit (or conscious) emotions, it failed to gain the consumer's implicit (or unconscious) emotions. Non-conscious information has an enormous influence in the decision-making process.

In general, the concept of neuromarketing combines marketing, psychology and neuroscience. Research is conducted around the implicit motivations to understand consumer decisions by non-invasive methods of measuring brain activity. These include electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), eye tracking, electrodermal response measures and other neuro-technologies. Researchers investigate and learn how consumers respond and feel when presented with products and/or related stimuli. Observations can then be correlated with participants surmised emotions and social interactions.

Market researchers use this information to determine if products or advertisements stimulate responses in the brain linked with positive emotions. The concept of neuromarketing was therefore introduced to study relevant human emotions and behavioral patterns associated with products, ads, and decision-making providing theorization of emotional aspects of consumer behavior. (Source: Wikipedia)

By MediaBUZZ