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This study aims to illuminate the contribution of neurophysiological techniques in the field of marketing and consumer decision-making and to highlight avenues and research questions that marketing researchers can take advantage of from neuroscience and psychology to inform marketing phenomena.

The authors first reviewed the roots and definition of consumer neuroscience. Then, the authors outlined the main characteristics of the most commonly used neurophysiological tools (namely, skin conductance, facial electromyography, electrocardiogram, eye-tracking, electroencephalography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, functional near-infrared spectroscopy, magnetoencephalography and transcranial magnetic stimulation) with a special emphasis on their advantages and weaknesses. Finally, the authors propose the development of research lines that could be implemented by marketing researchers with an appropriate application and understanding of tools and theories of neuroscience and psychology.

The authors propose research questions to be addressed within four thematic areas: opportunities in product decisions (predicting product purchasing decisions, consumer responses to branding efforts and packaging), pricing, communication and retailing scenarios. The authors also incorporate insights into the complementarity of neurophysiological tools to traditional ones and situations in which these tools are useful for enhancing marketing theory. The authors finally shed light on the moral–ethical criticisms of this new branch of marketing.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research constitutes the first study in identifying the research opportunities that marketing researchers could take advantage from neuroimaging and physiological tools to inform marketing theory and practice.

Esta investigación tiene como objetivo esclarecer la contribución de las técnicas neurofisiológicas en el campo del marketing y la toma de decisiones de los consumidores y destacar las vías y preguntas de investigación que los investigadores de marketing pueden aprovechar de la neurociencia y la psicología para informar sobre los fenómenos del marketing.

En primer lugar, revisamos el origen y la definición de la neurociencia del consumidor. A continuación, esbozamos las principales características de las herramientas neurofisiológicas más utilizadas (a saber, la conductancia, la electromiografía facial, el electrocardiograma, el seguimiento ocular, la electroencefalografía, la resonancia magnética funcional, la espectroscopia funcional en el infrarrojo cercano, la magnetoencefalografía y la estimulación magnética transcraneal), haciendo especial hincapié en sus ventajas y debilidades. Finalmente, se propone el desarrollo de líneas de investigación que podrían ser implementadas por los investigadores de marketing con una adecuada aplicación y comprensión de las herramientas y teorías de la neurociencia y la psicología.

Proponemos preguntas de investigación para ser abordadas dentro de cuatro áreas temáticas: oportunidades en las decisiones de producto (predicción de las decisiones de compra de productos, respuestas de los consumidores a los esfuerzos de marca y envasado), precios, comunicación y distribución. También incorporamos ideas sobre la complementariedad de las herramientas neurofisiológicas con las tradicionales y las situaciones en las que estas herramientas son útiles para mejorar la teoría del marketing. Por último, arrojamos luz sobre las críticas ético-morales a esta nueva rama del marketing.

本研究旨在阐明神经生理学技术在营销和消费者决策领域的贡献, 并强调营销研究人员可以从神经科学和心理学中利用的途径和研究问题, 以告知营销现象。

我们首先回顾了消费者神经科学的根基和定义。然后, 我们概述了最常用的神经生理学工具（即皮肤电导率、面部肌电图、心电图、眼球追踪、脑电图、功能性磁共振成像、功能性近红外光谱、脑磁图和经颅磁刺激）的主要特点, 特别强调了它们的优势和劣势。最后, 我们提出了研究路线的发展, 这些路线可以由营销研究人员通过适当的应用和理解神经科学和心理学的工具和理论来实施。

我们提出了四个主题领域的研究问题：产品决策中的机会（预测产品购买决策、消费者对品牌推广工作的反应和包装）、定价、沟通和零售场景。我们还纳入了对神经生理学工具与传统工具的互补性的见解, 以及这些工具对加强营销理论有用的情况。最后, 我们对这个新的营销分支的道德伦理批评进行了说明。

纸张类型 – 研究论文

This paper aims to review past papers focused on understanding consumer-related topics in marketing and related interdisciplinary fields to demonstrate the applications of electroencephalogram (EEG) in consumer neuroscience.

In addition to the review of papers using EEG to study consumer cognitive processes, the authors also discuss relevant decisions and considerations in conducting event-related potential (ERP) studies. Further, a framework proposed by Plassmann et al. (2015) was used to discuss the applications of EEG in marketing research from papers reviewed.

This paper successfully used Plassmann et al.’s (2015) framework to discuss five applications of neuroscience to marketing research. A review of growing EEG studies in the field of marketing and other interdisciplinary fields reveals the advantages and potential of using EEG in combination with other methods. This calls for more research using such methods.

A technical overview of ERP-related terminology provides researchers with a background for understanding and reviewing ERP studies. A discussion of method-related considerations and decisions provides marketing researchers with an introduction to the method and refers readers to relevant literature.

The marketing industry has been quick to adopt cutting edge technology, including EEG, to understand and predict consumer behavior for the purpose of improving marketing practices. This paper connects the academic and practitioner spheres by presenting past and potential EEG research that can be translatable to the marketing industry.

The authors review past literature on the use of EEG to study consumer-related topics in marketing and interdisciplinary fields, to demonstrate its advantages over-traditional methods in studying consumer-relevant behaviors. To foster increasing use of EEG in consumer neuroscience research, the authors further provide technical and marketing-specific considerations for both academic and market researchers. This paper is one of the first to review past EEG papers and provide methodological background insights for marketing researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the advancement of neuroscience research works in the domains of marketing management and organizational behavior and its future scope for expansion in the area of organizational behavior.

A total of 77 neuroscience research articles in the area of marketing management and organizational behavior published between 2004 and 2017 were reviewed, and a possible future direction for neuroscience research in the area of organizational behavior was identified in this article.

Findings from neuroscience research works suggest that tools and techniques that are useful in the neuroscience domain are also quite powerful and reliable in the context of organizational behavior research. Here, it should be noted that not all of these are independently powerful. Therefore, in certain cases, it is desirable to use neuroscience techniques in association with existing methods.

Neuroscientific research works in the context of the marketing domain were started with the motivation to identify the neural signaling in association with different marketing initiatives. However, the research works have proceeded much deeper and entered into the field of consumer psychology. Further research shows that neuroscience techniques are quite useful in the understanding of consumer behavior and can be extended in the field of organizational behavior. In this study, the authors have provided the future direction of neuroscience research works in the area of organizational behavior.

To grow, any field of research must both encourage newcomers to work within its boundaries, and help them learn to conduct excellent research within the field’s parameters. This paper aims to examine whether the existing body of neuromarketing literature can support such growth. Specifically, the authors attempt to replicate how a newcomer to the field of neuromarketing would go about orienting themselves to the field and learn how to conduct excellent neuromarketing research.

A total of 131 papers, published in the areas of “neuromarketing” and “consumer neuroscience” were downloaded and then identified as conceptual or empirical in nature. A separate database was created for each type of research paper and information was recorded. For both conceptual and empirical papers, the citation details, notably year of publication, journal, journal ranking and impact factor were recorded. Papers were then descriptively analysed with regards to number of publications over the years, content and journal quality.

It is found that interest in the field is growing, with a greater variety of topics and methods appearing year on year. However, the authors also identify some issues of concern for the field if it wishes to sustain this growth. First, the highly fragmented literature and the lack of signposting makes it very difficult for newcomers to find the relevant work and journal outlets. Second, there is a lack of high-quality, user-oriented methodological primers that a newcomer would come across. Finally, neuromarketing as it appears to a newcomer suffers from a lack of clear guidance on what defines good vs bad neuromarketing research. As a large majority of the reviewed papers have appeared in lower-ranked journals, newcomers might get a biased view on the acceptable research standards in the field.

The insights from the analysis inform a tentative agenda for future work which gives neuromarketing itself greater scientific purpose, and the potential to grow into a better-established field of study within marketing as a whole.

This paper aims to explore consumers’ cognitive responses to the presence of other people in a planned lifestyle center. The featured lifestyle center contains shopping, lodging, dining and retail options in an open-air setting full of natural elements. This work helps explain the affinity of consumers to lifestyle centers and shows marketing researchers and practitioners how to use neuroscience hardware and software in service design research.

The study draws on social impact theory to show how the social presence of others in a lifestyle center influences six different cognitive responses. The authors evaluate consumers’ cognitive responses by using the Emotiv EPOC+ headset to obtain electroencephalogram recordings. To interpret these recordings, they use EmotivPro software, which provides readings on six emotional states, including excitement, interest, stress, engagement, attention and relaxation.

The data obtained from mall shoppers reveal that the presence of other people in a lifestyle center evokes high levels of interest and excitement and encourages relaxation.

The paper shows marketers how to use neural data to obtain insights into consumers’ cognitive responses to stimuli by using Emotiv headsets and software.

The results show the importance of social elements in encouraging customers to approach and spend time in lifestyle centers.

The paper is one of the first to explore consumers’ responses to strangers in shared settings using neuroscience.

Neuroimaging technologies such as electroencephalogram and magnetic resonance imaging allow us to analyze consumers’ brains in real time as they experience emotions. These technologies collect and integrate data on consumers’ brains for big data analytics. The purpose of this paper is to identify new opportunities and challenges for neuromarketing as an applied neuroscience.

The authors discuss conceptual and methodological contributions of neuromarketing based on studies that have employed neural approaches in market-related investigations, explaining the various tools and designs of neuromarketing research. The authors identify marketing-related questions to which neuroscientific approaches can make meaningful contributions, evaluating several challenges that lie ahead for neuromarketing.

The authors summarize the contributions of neuromarketing and discuss synergistic findings that neuromarketing has the potential to yield.

The authors ask: do consumers’ self-reported choices and their neural representations tell different stories?; what are the effects of subtle and peripheral marketing stimuli?; and can neuromarketing help to reveal the underlying causal mechanisms for perceptual and learning processes, such as motivation and emotions?

The authors identify marketing-related questions to which neuroscientific approaches can make meaningful contributions, evaluating several challenges that lie ahead for neuromarketing.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no current review has identified avenues for future research in neuromarketing and the emerging challenges that researchers may face. The current paper aims to update readers on what neuroscience and other psychophysiological measures have achieved, as well as what these tools have to offer in the field of marketing. The authors also aim to foster greater application of neuroscientific methods, beyond the more biased/post-test methods such as self-report studies, which currently exist in consumer research.

Drawing on the literature from cognitive neuroscience and auditing research on professional skepticism (PS), this paper identifies new research questions, determinants, and theories that may resolve current problem areas in PS research. We identify the following PS research areas that neuroscientific perspectives can potentially improve: 1) theory, 2) trust, 3) trait and state skepticism, 4) deception/fraud detection, and 5) skeptical judgment and action. The paper concludes with a discussion of the critical question of whether integrating a neuroscientific perspective in PS research is worthwhile and provides further direction for future research.

This study is the first to examine consumer’s neural reaction to different merchandising communication strategies at the point-of-sale (PoS) by applying functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). By doing so, the purpose of this study is to extend consumer neuroscience to retail and shopper research.

Two experiments were conducted in which 36 shoppers were exposed to a realistic grocery shopping scenario while their brain haemodynamics were measured using mobile fNIRS.

Results revealed that mobile fNIRS appears a valid method to study neural activation of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in the field of “shopper neuroscience”. More precisely, results demonstrated that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) might be crucial for processing and predicting merchandising communication strategy effectiveness.

This research gives evidence that certain regions of the PFC, in particular the OFC and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), are crucial to process and evaluate merchandising communication strategies.

The current work opens a promising new avenue for studying and understanding shopper’s behaviour. Mobile fNIRS enables marketing management to collect neural data from shoppers and analyse neural activity associated with real-life settings. Furthermore, based on a better understanding of shoppers’ perceptual processes of communication strategies, marketers can design more effective merchandising communication strategies.

The study is the first to implement the innovative, mobile neuroimaging method of fNIRS to a PoS setting. It, therefore, opens up the promising field of “shopper neuroscience”.

This paper aims to elucidate some of the complexity around food consumption by drawing from neuroscience research of food as a motivated choice (i.e. a neurobehavioral process sensitive to dopaminergic response to food and environmental cues such as marketing). The authors explore the single and compounded effect of the motivational salience of food’s intrinsic reinforcing value tied to its sugar content and that of two marketing food cues, price and in-store display, on actual consumer purchase behavior.

The authors test the above hypotheses in two perceived “healthy” product categories with a wide distribution of sugar content. The authors estimate a within-category model using three years of retail transaction data to test the effect on weekly sales.

The authors confirm the single effect of each of food’s and marketing cues’ motivational salience as well as their compounded effect with high-motivational-salience food being less price elastic and more susceptible to in-store display activities.

This research highlights the need to complement current reliance on unhealthy/healthy perception with finer grained objective evidence linked to the formulation of the food itself and the marketing applied to them.

The present study findings may help marketing managers and policymakers develop better targeted pricing and display strategies for low- and high-motivational-salience food, attempting to strike a better balance between consumer welfare and commercial performance.

This paper is one of the few that links real-world market outcomes to predictions derived from a unique combination of consumer neuroscience and neurobiology of food, advancing data-driven decisions.

To advance marketing research and practice, this study aims to examine the application of the innovative, mobile-applicable neuroimaging method – mobile functional near-infrared spectroscopy (mfNIRS) – in the field of marketing research, providing comprehensive guidelines and practical recommendations.

A general review and investigation of when and how to use mfNIRS in business-to-consumer and business-to-business marketing settings is used to illustrate the utility of mfNIRS.

The research findings help prospective marketing and consumer neuroscience researchers to structure mfNIRS experiments, perform the analysis and interpret the obtained mfNIRS data.

The application of mfNIRS offers opportunities for marketing research that allow the exploration of neural processes and associated behaviour of customers in naturalistic settings.

The application of mfNIRS as a neuroimaging method enables the investigation of unconscious neural processes that control customer behaviour and can act as process variables for companies.

This is one of the first studies to provide comprehensive guidelines and applied practical recommendations concerning when and how to apply mfNIRS in marketing research.