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The purpose of this paper is to review recent applications of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other neuroimaging techniques in marketing and advertising, and to present some methodological and statistical considerations that should be taken into consideration when applying fMRI to study consumers’ cognitive behavior related to marketing phenomena.

A critical approach to investigate three methodological issues related to fMRI applications in marketing is adopted. These issues deal mainly with brain activation regions, event-related fMRI and signal-to-noise ratio. Statistical issues related to fMRI data pre-processing, analyzing and reporting are also investigated.

Neuroimaging cognitive techniques have great potential in marketing and advertising. This is because, unlike conventional marketing research methods, neuroimaging data are much less susceptible to social desirability and “interviewer’s” effect. Thus, it is expected that using neuroimaging methods to investigate which areas in a consumer’s brain are activated in response to a specific marketing stimulus can provide a much more honest indicator of their cognition compared to traditional marketing research tools such as focus groups and questionnaires.

By merging disparate fields, such as marketing, neuroscience and cognitive psychology, this research presents a comprehensive critical review of how neuroscientific methods can be used to test existing marketing theories.

In light of the growing interest in neuroscience within the managerial and organizational cognition (MOC) scholarly domain at large, this chapter advances current knowledge on core neuroscience methods. It does so by building on the theoretical analysis put forward by Healey and Hodgkinson (2014, 2015), and by offering a thorough – yet accessible – methodological framework for a better understanding of key cognitive and social neuroscience methods. Classifying neuroscience methods based on their degree of resolution, functionality, and anatomical focus, the chapter outlines their features, practicalities, advantages and disadvantages. Specifically, it focuses on functional magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography, heart rate variability, and skin conductance response. Equipped with knowledge of these methods, researchers will be able to further their understanding of the potential synergies between management and neuroscience, to better appreciate and evaluate the value of neuroscience methods, and to look at new ways to frame old and new research questions in MOC. The chapter also builds bridges between researchers and practitioners by rebalancing the hype and hopes surrounding the use of neuroscience in management theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview of the methodology of several brain imaging techniques and in particular, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and its potential implications for market research. The aim is to enable the reader both to understand this emerging methodology and to conduct independent research in the area.

A short introduction on current neuroimaging methods used in behavioral neuroscience is provided by means of a literature review. The ensuing discussion focuses on fMRI as the currently most popular neuroimaging technique. Having described the fMRI methodology, an outline of the analysis of functional neuroimaging data follows, after which there is a discussion of some key research issues.

Although in its infancy, fMRI seems to be a useful and promising tool for market researchers. Initial studies in the field reveal that fMRI is able to shed light on subconscious processes such as affective aspects of consumer behavior.

Because brand positioning, advertising strategies and even pricing strategies are often based on constructs such as emotions, neuropsychological findings and methods should have important implications for practitioners in the field of brand management and advertising. Nonetheless, far more basic research is needed before fMRI can be adopted for marketing practice.

This paper is one of the first in the marketing literature to provide a methodological overview of fMRI and discuss the potential implications for marketing research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that underpin consumer attitude toward switching a product brand, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study brain activity during the decision-making process. Most of the literature shows that in the past, conventional marketing research approaches have been used to study brand switching among consumers. However, there is a lack of understanding of the importance of evaluating brain activations during the decision-making process when a consumer is selecting a brand.

The proposed model is a simplified version of consumer acceptance of technology model. This model accounts for cognitive and affect factors when choosing a product by including perceived usefulness and pleasure variables, respectively. An event-related fMRI experiment was designed and conducted using two smartphone brands.

The level of brain activation at the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) increased when participants were asked to judge images that reflect brand perceived usefulness compared with judging images that reflect brand pleasure. Similarly, the higher the perceived usefulness of the other smartphone, the greater the activation of the vmPFC during decision-making to switch to that smartphone.

This study contributes to the literature on brand switching by exploring the importance of fMRI technique in evaluating brain activities during decision-making to adopt a brand. For managers, research findings would allow them to draft better marketing and advertisement strategies that enhance consumer perception value of high technology brands and positive emotional experience.

Although the literature reports considerable research on brand switching, this is the first exploratory study to utilize fMRI to investigate consumer attitude toward switching. In addition, unlike most prior research, which uses generic products in fMRI studies, this study is utilizing high technology product to investigate the brand switching behavior.

Recent years have witnessed a rise in interest in neuromarketing from academia and industry, as it offers practical tools for determining consumers' subconscious reactions to marketing stimuli. Despite this, the current state of neuromarketing research is not well supported by empirical data. To offer a thorough overview of the studies conducted on this discipline in the past few years, a bibliometric analysis of neuromarketing is carried out, taking into account its techniques, key areas and publication patterns trends from several viewpoints.

This study searched 463 documents for the web of science databases published during the previous sixteen years and visualized them. The graphical display of data was created using the VOS Viewer software.

Electroencephalogram (EEG) appeared as a predominantly tool used in neuromarketing research. EEG is either used alone or together with Human Eye-Tracking (HET). “Emotions” was identified in the study as a crucial area of neuromarketing, among other pertinent concepts. The study's results also showed that authors from the United States produced the most articles on neuromarketing, followed by those from the United Kingdom and Spain. The publishing trend, sources and major contributors in neuromarketing are identified using Web of Science data from 2006 to 2021. Overall, the research provides insight into neuromarketing's past, present and future as well as the most widely utilized analytical techniques.

The study's conclusions will be of interest to researchers in understanding the journals that publish neuromarketing research, the themes that contributors and writers have identified, and the countries where research is carried out. This is the first comprehensive study, to the authors' knowledge, that provides a general summary of the key trends in neuromarketing research throughout its history. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first thorough study that offers a broad overview of the most important developments in neuromarketing research from 2006 to 2021.

This paper aims to explore brain-based differences in national and own-label brands perceptions. Because price is a differentiating characteristic, able to discriminate between national and own-label brands, its influence is also studied.

The study uses the Save Holdings Or Purchase (SHOP) task with functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the differences in brain functioning for national versus own-label branded products.

For the same product, the higher priced national brands and the lower priced own-label brands lead to more buying decisions. It is also found that there are brain structures that are more active/deactive for national than for own-label brands, both marked with real market prices. Price is a powerful driver of buying decisions and has its neural correlates. Parietal regions activate when brand information is subtracted from brand-plus-price information. The most surprising finding is that visual and visual associative areas are involved in the contrasts between branded products marked with switched prices and marked with real market prices.

The activation/deactivation brain patterns suggest that accepted models of brain functioning are not suitable for explaining brand decisions. Also, to our knowledge, this is the first time that a study directly addresses the brain’s functioning when subjects are stimulated with national versus own-label brands. It paves the way for a new approach to understanding how such brand categories are perceived, revealing the neural origins of the associated psychological processes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of destination images on tourists’ behavioral intention to select a destination for their next vacation. Most of previous studies investigated this relationship by interacting with tourists during their stay in the destination. However, this research examines the impact of destination images before tourists visit a destination, using functional technological-oriented magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) approach to track brain activation during the decision to select a destination.

The proposed model is adopted from the theory of planned behavior. Study participants divide a set of hotel destination images into two groups: attractive and non-attractive destination images. A blocked design experiment was used during fMRI scan to track brain activities resulting from presenting the two groups of images to participants, and record the strength of their intention to visit the attractive destination.

The level of brain activation at the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) increased when participants were asked to assess the attractive destination images compared with the level of activation for non-attractive ones. Also, the positive attitude toward an attractive destination led to higher intention to visit that destination.

This study enhances the authors’ understanding of how tourists analyze destination images to reach a decision on future action. It can also be used to help destination managers define an advertisement strategy that makes their destination more attractive.

Although the literature reports considerable research on destination image and its influence on tourists intention, this is the first exploratory study to use the fMRI technology to investigate tourists’ attitude toward destination images.

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.

The purpose of this study is to examine how consumer personality trait impulsiveness influences trustworthiness evaluations of online-offers with different trust-assuring and trust-reducing elements by measuring the brain activity of consumers. Shoppers with high degrees of impulsiveness are referred to as hedonic shoppers, and those with low degrees are referred to as prudent consumers.

To investigate the differences between neural processes in the brains of hedonic and prudent shoppers during the trustworthiness evaluation of online-offers, the present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and region-of-interest analysis to correlate neural activity patterns with behavioral measures of the study participants.

Drawing upon literature reviews on the neural correlates of both trust in online settings and consumer impulsiveness and using an experimental design that links behavioral and fMRI data, the study shows that consumer impulsiveness can exert a significant influence on the evaluation of online-offers. With regard to brain activation, both groups (hedonic and prudent shoppers) exhibit similar neural activation tendencies, but differences exist in the magnitude of activation patterns in brain regions that are closely related to trust and impulsiveness such as the dorsal striatum, anterior cingulate, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the insula cortex.

The data provide evidence that consumers within the hedonic group evaluate online-offers differently with regard to their trustworthiness compared to the prudent group, and that these differences in evaluation are rooted in neural activation differences in the shoppers’ brains.

Marketers need to be made aware of the fact that neurological insights can be used for market segmentation, because consumers’ decision-making processes help explain behavioral outcomes (here, trustworthiness evaluations of online-offers). In addition, consumers can learn from an advanced understanding of their brain functions during decision-making and their relation to personal traits such as impulsiveness.

Considering the importance of trust in online shopping, as well as the fact that personality traits such as impulsiveness influence the purchase process to a high degree, this study is the first to systematically investigate the interplay of online trustworthiness perceptions and differences in consumer impulsiveness with neuroscientific methods.

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”.