Neuro-Marketing through FMRI and NAcc

Brandpsych logo

It’s a brave new world we are seeing and must work within. As an evolving story, we have to consider how online advertising will be affecting the consumer’s brain? Neuro-marketing research is already investigating the effect online neuro-marketing will have on our brains in the current and evolving Internet/PDA world.

As we have recently discussed in a previous blog, researchers have learned that when the consumer first receives a message, it hits a section of the brain called the Nucleus Accumbens (NAcc). This is the reward/punishment, pleasure/pain “headquarters” of the brain. By evaluating the amount of activity in such demarcated brain areas, the prefrontal cortex and the insula, neuro-marketing’s use of FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is working on a process to foresee how a consumer makes shopping decisions. For example, if the NAcc indicates a positive desire response from a brand message over a more negative doubt response –“Should I be spending money?” then the pre-frontal cortex could believe that it is getting a great deal and making a wise choice (such as better prices, bonuses, and other personal satisfactions).

NeuroMarketing
Drawing by Art Winters

Neuro-marketers are seeing the possibilities of using FMRI to examine and better understand the workings of consumers’ brains.
With this new knowledge they hope to develop new ways to initiate and stimulate consumer wants and needs. Don’t forget that it has always been marketing’s purpose to stimulate the consumer’s cravings and increase AIDA: attention, interest, desire and action.

If this concept makes you feel queasy, what kind of debate might occur if companies/brands have more invasive ways to communicate to and influence consumers in how to respond to a brand’s image, its brand story, and its brand positioning for superiority???

What kind of society will develop if this becomes the normal practice rather than a seemingly science fiction prediction?

OMG – What’s Next??? We may not be LOL’ing for long…….

 

Arthur & Peggy Winters co-teach SXB 200 Brand Marketing Communications for Image & Meaning and SXR 050 Intro to Branding: The Art of Customer Bonding.