Consumer Neuroscience: Theory and Application

By Cathrine Jansson-Boyd and Peter Bright

To truly understand consumer behaviors, we need a clear understanding of how the brain is shaped by contextual factors. Consumer Neuroscience presents a clear overview of the fundamentals of neuroscience and applies the principles to understanding consumer behaviors. The initial chapters introduce the topic to ensure that even those with a limited knowledge of neuroscience will be able to grasp the more advanced content. The book moves on to review: methods, the field of affective neuroscience, mechanisms and applications of neuroimaging methods and fundamentals of visual neuroscience. Consumer Neuroscience concludes with a collection of case studies that allow readers to analyze actual results of different cases in which brain activity was used to answer marketing and business questions.

• Presents readers with a clear overview of consumer neuroscience as a field
• Includes a visual brain index
• Discusses neuroscientific areas that are highly relevant to consumer sciences but may not yet have been integrated into the discipline
• Offers the combined expertise of a psychologist and a neuroscientist in authoring the book to provide well rounded insights into the area of consumer neuroscience
• Describes unresolved issues and possible methods in consumer neuroscience, along with approaches for tackling them

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academic Press
• Release date: Nov 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9780443135828

Cathrine Jansson-Boyd

Cathrine has written two books (with more in production), conducted research for large organizations including Cambridgeshire County Council and Unilever, published many articles and given numerous talks on consumer psychology-based topics. Currently she is teaching consumer and social psychology but has previously taught other areas including environmental psychology, cognitive psychology and occupational psychology. Cathrine has also held academically related positions at the London Metropolitan University, Birkbeck and London School of Economics.

Book preview

Chapter 1 Introduction to consumer neuroscience

Keywords

Consumer neuroscience; neuromarketing; electroencephalography (EEG); Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI); brain plasticity; ethics

Consumer neuroscience is the study of neuropsychological mechanisms that underpin consumer thought processes, decision making, and behavior. The discipline makes use of psychological, marketing, and neuroscience methods to offer insight into different aspects of consumer behaviors. The overarching aim of consumer neuroscience is to (i) develop theoretical models and frameworks, using scientific methods, which offer compelling explanations and predictions around all aspects of consumer behavior and (ii) to identify the neural bases of these behaviors (e.g., Levallois et al., 2012; Russo et al., 2015). Essentially, we may consider this discipline as cognitive neuroscience directed toward revealing the neurocognitive bases of consumer behavior.

Understanding the brain is a key step in understanding consumers, as all thoughts and behaviors stem from the brain (Gazzaniga, 2004). To date, most consumer-related studies focus on the cognitive and/or behavioral outcomes rather than the underlying brain processes. We might therefore view such studies as limited or ‘brainless’ in the sense that they typically focus on predicting behavior (the dependent variable) associated with a stimulus or set of stimuli (the independent variable) without embedding these inputs and outputs within the brain’s neural networks. Neuroscience can provide a more comprehensive picture for how consumers think, feel, and act by combining cognitive, marketing, economic theory, etc., with primary research data acquired from the brains of study participants. Interest in this field has grown extensively in the last decade (Lee et al., 2018). Even as early as 2008 it was found that there were over 800,000 hits for the term neuromarketing on Google (Hubert & Kenning, 2008) and in 2022 the same search shows results for over 4.7 million. Neuromarketing, while commonly used interchangeably with consumer neuroscience within the marketing literature, is the term usually used by practitioners and those with an interest in neurophysiological tools (Agarwal & Dutta, 2015). While the general interest in the area has been paralleled with a growth in the number of scientific papers published in the domain, there are few books covering this topic. This book will therefore provide an overview of literature for those who wish to have a broader understanding of consumer neuroscience.

This book will present you with an introduction to the world of consumer neuroscience by covering key topics within the area. The aim is to provide an overview that will help the consumer neuroscience student, researchers, and those working within a professional setting such as marketing. We also hope that those who have not yet appreciated the appeal and usefulness of consumer neuroscience will find our book engaging and that it may encourage uptake of the available methods in the service of progressing theoretical understanding around consumer behavior. One of the main goals of this book is to appeal to a broad range of readers that we hope will find this book useful. Whether you are skeptical about the usefulness of neuroscience in consumer research or you are already a convert, it is our hope that you will find reading this book worthwhile.

Understanding consumers is not easy, and as many market researchers know all too well, consumers do not always say what they mean. This can be a problem given that one of the most common ways to tap into what consumers think is by asking them questions. Here it is not proposed that consumer neuroscience has the answer to all the shortcomings of more traditional consumer research but simply that it can be utilized as an effective complementary tool. Commonly used modern neuroscience research tools such as electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are powerful instruments for enriching the knowledge and understanding people have for consumer behaviors. Both eye-tracking and fMRI have received much attention. Eye-tracking is perhaps particularly useful because it is relatively easy and inexpensive to use and has very broad application in helping us understand visually guided consumer behavior. Many marketing-related businesses have already incorporated this method into their research practices. Functional neuroimaging (principally fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) methods offer rich information on the neural correlates of cognition, delineating the spatially distributed neural networks underpinning complex thought processes. You can read about the different research tools in Chapter 3.

By looking to neuroscience for additional insight we can build theories explaining the brain bases of consumer behavior, but there are significant challenges in using neuroscience within consumer-based research and it is important to acknowledge the limitations associated with each available method. Despite caveats however, we hope that our book provides ample evidence that application of consumer neuroscience methods will serve a deeper understanding of how consumers think and act.

Advantages of consumer neuroscience

There is a commonly held belief that consumption is just common sense and, therefore, there is no need to subject it to empirical study. However, over the course of the last 50 or so years, studies conducted within disciplines such as consumer psychology, advertising, and marketing reveal that consumers do not always engage in rational behaviors and as such there have been many surprising revelations made. Consumer neuroscience opens up the field, through the exploitation of new technological advances, to provide more in-depth understanding of why consumers do what they do. While consumer psychologists have managed to rigorously map observed responses (dependent variables or DVs) to stimulus manipulation (independent variables or IVs) in their studies, relatively little has been done in the way of understanding the internal workings of the consumer, and this is where consumer neuroscience comes in. Thus application of brain imaging methods can support, enrich, and strengthen the understanding of what we already know about consumer behaviors, not least in situations in which consumers are not consciously engaging. Neuroscience-based techniques such as fMRI, coupled with our robust knowledge around the functional roles of different brain structures, can reveal the neural correlates of stimulus-specific emotional processing in participants even when they are unaware of their emotional response to that stimulus (e.g., Lee et al., 2007); such findings can subsequently build knowledge through further investigation and lead to adoption of new practices by marketing companies. This is evident from a study in which participants were exposed to persuasive messages about the importance of using sunscreen to protect themselves from skin cancer (Falk et al., 2010). Findings suggested that activity in the medial prefrontal cortex was related to behavior change 2 weeks after they had seen the messages and that this activity explained substantially more of the variance in actual behavior change in their sample than self-reported intentions.

Application of methods available to the cognitive neuroscientist offers the opportunity to investigate socially sensitive topics which might otherwise be resistant to reliable measurement due, for example, to the tendency for people to provide socially expected or desirable responses. While they can control their behavior in the service of providing an answer or response they consider socially acceptable, they will not have the same control over the underpinning and measurable brain activity and this can therefore provide potentially valuable information otherwise obscured by the overt behavioral response. While data acquired through functional neuroimaging is necessarily correlational and open to interpretation (e.g., fMRI, as explained in Chapter 3, measures a blood-based correlate of neural activity, and not the neural activity itself), careful evaluation can potentially provide relatively unbiased information about cognitive thought processes underpinning consumer behavior (Camerer et al., 2005).

Should businesses be skeptical of using neuroscience?

While all scientists should be fully informed around the strengths and limitations of the methods they employ, there is no reason for businesses to assume that utilizing neuroscience methods is inappropriate in their efforts to build their market share and profitability. If you or your company have the opportunity to work with someone with a good understanding of neuroscience methods and how to develop and test theories and ideas appropriately, such collaboration may open up a new and exciting way of furthering your business potential. Nevertheless, some researchers now believe that some methods (and functional MRI in particular) have promised more than they have delivered in terms of progressing theoretical understanding of cognitive processing. It is therefore recognized that only through using multiple methods of investigation, in which the limitations of one method are addressed by exploiting the strengths of another, are we likely to drive significant advances in our knowledge of how the brain does its work.

Shortcomings

As with any research area there are difficulties that should be carefully considered to improve the discipline. Here we consider four areas: need for training in those wishing to conduct research in the field of consumer neuroscience, the limitations of the research methods at our disposal and the issue of ‘reverse inference,’ ethics, and the cost of employing brain imaging methods in research. While these areas are specifically focused on here, there will also be other shortcomings, of which some are covered in different parts of the book. However, training, reverse inference, ethics, and cost are a good starting point on which you can build.

Training is required

Currently, there are likely to be many academics and students interested in consumer neuroscience but they may lack the relevant training and background in neuroscience methods. To become a researcher within this field suitable training is required in brain neuroanatomy, experimental design, and of course in the methods themselves as well as the source of the signal in the brain that is being measured. Visual presentation of neuroimaging data can appear highly convincing and it is therefore particularly important to understand what is actually being measured (i.e., an indirect measure of neural activity subject to influence from a range of sources) along with an appreciation of additional significant issues that limit the possibility of associating the measured brain signal with the experimental manipulation. Research indicates that simply including the image of a brain alongside behavioral data can lead to the perception that a study is more ‘scientific’ than when the behavioral data is presented alone, even when it does not carry any additional information of relevance to the study aims (McCabe & Castel, 2008). Thus it is always important to focus on the robustness of the science, which can only be done when researchers have a good understanding of theory, experimental design, statistics, and the technologically advanced methods applied in consumer neuroscience.

While some undergraduate university modules may include an element of consumer neuroscience, most relevant training will happen at postgraduate level. Currently, there are few postgraduate university courses that specifically focus on consumer neuroscience but they are bound to increase as the field grows. However, there are also other (in some cases very similar) courses such as Applied Neuroscience, Neuromarketing, and Neurology masters courses that can provide good underpinnings for a career in the area. Additionally, there are many Consumer Psychology, Marketing, and Consumer Insight courses that at least partially cover consumer neuroscience as a distinct discipline.

Nevertheless, given rapidly increasing application of consumer neuroscience methods both in business and in research, more training needs to take place and hence more courses are needed to provide ease of access to training.

Reverse inference

One limitation of consumer neuroscience is reverse inference which is the inference to ‘psychological processes’ from ‘patterns of activation’ that are identified using neuroscience research tools such as fMRI (Glymour & Hanson, 2020). For example, in an fMRI study of emotional processing it may be assumed that a participant experiences fear if the amygdala is disproportionately activated relative to other brain structures during the task, but this requires holding assumptions about the role of the amygdala in emotional processing and that the observed data are necessarily underpinned by the elicitation of a general fear response induced by the task. Specifically, inferring a general mental process or state from patterns of activation is commonplace in cognitive and consumer neuroscience but is problematic, particularly when based on a single study or limited number of studies (for discussion, see Hutzler, 2014; Poldrack, 2006). Instead, it is suggested that functional neuroimaging-based findings can really only confirm hypotheses about activations associated with task-specific conditions.

Part of the difficulty in interpreting imaging data concerns the selectivity of the cortical area activated to the cognitive processes engaged by the task. It may be the case, for example, that the area activated by the task is also engaged in many other quite different tasks, and it therefore might be inappropriate to assign a given function (e.g., fear processing) to that structure (e.g., the amygdala). There are many arguments against the premise that consumer neuroscience can be used to test behavioral hypotheses rather than simply identify where in the brain task-related processing takes place (e.g., Poldrack, 2006). However, it becomes particularly problematic if authors’ inferences are based on reverse inference. Poldrack suggested that this can lead to a research epidemic that takes the following form:

1.In a research study when task comparison A was presented, area Z in the brain was active.

2.In other research studies, when cognitive process X was expected to be engaged, then brain area Z was active.

3.Therefore the cognitive process X can relate to the task comparison A.

However, not everyone is as cautious about inverse inference and some have argued that it can indeed be useful. For example, Hutzler (2014) has argued that reverse inference should not be dismissed out of hand but that instead it ought to be acknowledged that reliability depends on the cognitive processes of interest as well as the task that is being used. Since more advanced areas of the brain are likely to be involved in a range of mental processes (Plassmann et al., 2012), activation in such areas provides weak evidence for their selective engagement of the mental process elicited by the task. However, if a specific area of the brain is activated relatively selectively by the specific mental process of interest this can be offered as support for the authors’ hypothesis about the function of that area. This hypothesis can then be tested in subsequent studies in the service of building toward a theory that more successfully encapsulates the selectivity and diversity of function associated with that area. It should always be recognized that hypotheses are not ‘facts’; rather, they are ideas that are likely to require much development and further testing before they can be considered to provide a fair reflection of the phenomenon under scrutiny (e.g., Kahneman, 2009; Poldrack, 2011).

Ethics

While the topic of ethics may not feel as relevant to academic practitioners as it is for people working within the marketing industry, consideration of issues around ethics should always be an important part of any research, particularly when it includes participants (whether human or other species). Academic and medical research is typically constrained by subject governing boards (such as the American Psychological Association, the British Psychological Society), university regulations, and external ethics boards. These panels are responsible for ensuring that risk to participants, researchers, confidentiality of data, appropriateness of the research design, sample characteristics, and other issues are carefully considered and balanced against the research objectives. It is also worth considering that there is sometimes a difference in focus between academic studies and those conducted within industry. In many instances those conducted in academia take a consumer-centered approach while those in industry often have a business-focused one.

Research in industry may have more relaxed constraints around the ethics review process than in academia and medical research although we also acknowledge that, according to some authors, the sector has no less rigorous approach than other sectors (e.g., Brammer, 2004). It remains equally important, however, that research in industry ensures that inferences drawn on the basis of that research are aligned with the study objectives and are presented objectively and fairly on the basis of the acquired data. As stated before, relevant training is therefore a key requirement to ensure that research is ethical, conducted well, and analyzed and interpreted correctly. To help define ethical industry standards we would always encourage academics and industry to work alongside one another to ensure that there is consensus on how to effectively conduct studies in consumer neuroscience. When required, such collaboration can guide and establish suitable ethical standards for commercially based studies.

Having a more coherent and ethically based approach to consumer neuroscience should help with some of the bad press that the use of neuroscience in commercial settings has received in the past. For example, in 2004 an editorial in Nature Neuroscience suggested that neuromarketing is a fad and is used by industry to blind their clients with science (Editorial, 2004). While we have come a fair way since 2004 there is no denying that there are still skeptics who question the usefulness of the discipline. ‘Consumer neuroscience’ is a relatively new name for this discipline which may encourage differentiation from the negative associations sometimes held against the older and more narrowly defined term ‘neuromarketing.’

One ethical issue that seems particularly pertinent to consumer-related research concerns how research findings are used. For as long as advertising and marketing have existed, there have been those questioning the ethics of persuading consumers to purchase products and services. This concern is equally applicable to the use of neuroimaging in consumer neuroscience studies. For example, should neuroimaging be employed to leverage the maximization of financial profits (Madan, 2010)? There have also been discussions around whether the introduction of neuroscience methods into consumer research potentially violates consumer rights such as privacy (e.g., Ariely & Berns, 2010). No doubt, the area would benefit from more collaborations with researchers who have been embedded within the brain sciences throughout their careers and may therefore understand well the ethical issues associated with the exploitation of brain imaging methods for research purposes. However, given the relative newcomer status of consumer neuroscience, there may be a reluctance within cognitive neuroscience and medical imaging to engage in consumer-related studies if this discipline is considered to lack the prestige of more firmly established disciplines (e.g., Javor et al., 2013). Evidence consistent with this concern has been presented by Fisher et al. (2010) in a study of medical doctors conducting pharmaceutical-based consumer studies (e.g., Fisher et al., 2010).

The inclusion of experienced neuroscience researchers can help to foster good ethical standards within consumer neuroscience, especially when it comes to protecting study participants. It has been speculated that there may be studies that do not comply with ethical declarations such as the Helsinki Declaration, originally set up in 1964 as a set of principles governing medical research with human participants (Javor et al., 2013). This could mean that some studies conducted outside of academia do not fulfill the ethical obligations that academics robustly adhere to. It could also mean studies conducted on minors, which require extra protections (e.g., Murphy et al., 2008), are not implemented. While most consumer neuroscience studies may adopt sensible ethics oversight, we would always encourage close collaboration with experienced researchers to navigate these hurdles, ensuring that participants, research, and data are well protected.

Can you afford to use neuroscience equipment?

Neuroscience studies are often much more expensive to conduct than standard behavioral experiments. However, the cost of some of the equipment is gradually becoming cheaper. A lab with electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking equipment no longer costs as much as it once did. Costs are variable as is the quality of the equipment, and thus the cheapest options may not provide you with the outcome you hoped for. EEG equipment should also ideally have its own electromagnetically shielded space, separate from other users, to ensure good quality data. Hence, space may also add to the cost (at least if you are only just setting an EEG lab up). Eye-tracking equipment has come down in price and with technology moving forward, what was once a static big machine can now be a set of glasses with transportable equipment for support.

Functional neuroimaging is far more expensive, and a 1 hour session in an fMRI scanner may cost between £300 and £1000, depending on where in the world it is conducted. Then you usually must pay the participants as well as the lab technicians and radiographers that run the fMRI facility. It can also be difficult to book sufficient scanner time as they are often in high demand, particularly if housed in hospitals and used for medical purposes. Functional imaging also requires considerable storage space, expertise, and time required for study design, preprocessing, and analyzing the data (as explained in Chapter 3). For these reasons, imaging research often requires successful external funding applications, which themselves can take several months to prepare and submit, with only a small minority of applications being successful.

As with any science, the cost should not be the determining factor in what methodology should be used. Instead, it should come down to what will provide a researcher with results that can best shed some light on what is being investigated.

Context and individual differences

The context within which we live our lives impacts upon our thinking and behavior and can modulate the structure of the brain. A new discipline has emerged in recent decades called Social Neuroscience which aims to progress our understanding of the interdependencies of social experience and brain structure and function. Social structures constrain the behaviors we can exhibit and the ways in which we think about things. For example, impoverished environments and low socioeconomic well-being are often associated with lower intellectual abilities and there is some evidence that enriched environments might offset age-related structural deterioration in the brain. It needs to be understood that there can be a two-way relationship between the (social) environment and the brain due to its structural and functional plasticity. Due to poor signal-to-noise ratio, most neuroimaging research is necessarily based on group studies, in which the brains of the participants are transformed so that they are all the same shape and size, so that sufficiently powered statistical analyses can then be conducted and inferences drawn around the function of the brain structure of interest. Yet, we can legitimately ask whether this is an appropriate thing to do given that brains are not identical at birth and undergo further adaptation contingent upon a person’s unique social, educational, and other experiences through life. Given that consumer neuroscience is fundamentally concerned with understanding and/or altering consumer-related decision making, acknowledging the importance of individual differences and social contexts will be an important early step in developing a well-designed study from which potentially valuable insights will emerge.

Brain plasticity

As described before, experiences have the capacity to alter structure and function of the brain. Genetically identical animals have been found to have differences in neural connections (Goodman, 1979) and varied behaviors and temperament (Archer et al., 2003) despite being genetically identical. The reason why genetically identical people do not have identical brains or exhibit the same behaviors is because they are exposed to different types of experiences (Ridley, 2003). One example of how it is not genes alone but the interactions with environment that determine behaviors can be noted from a study of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The authors found that a dopamine receptor gene (DRD4), which is linked to ADHD, functions differently depending on whether it had been subjected to good or poor quality parenting (Sheese et al., 2007).

It has been found that young individuals are vulnerable to alterations in brain anatomy and behaviors. This is because people are born in an immature anatomical and behavioral state (Rosenzweig & Bennett, 1977, 1978). Therefore early childhood enrichment programs might support increases in IQ (Raine et al., 2002) that last for a long time and even persist through life. The vulnerability and malleability of young individuals also links to the discussion in this chapter about ethics. It may be that exposure to consumer stimuli alters the way in which people respond to such stimuli in the future and thus it may be that manufacturers of consumer products have a lot more to be responsible for than just releasing them into the society.

Expectations guide responses

Another example of how social influences can affect the brain can be noted from a study conducted by Rainville et al. (1997). In their study they asked participants to put a hand into moderately hot water around a temperature of 47°C and thus they would anticipate a mild discomfort. It was found that the anterior cingulate cortex was active while they had their hand in the water, presumably because of the discomfort involved. However, when people were led to believe the water would be incredibly hot, the same areas were more active than it was for those that thought the pain would be minimal. Hence, here we have a clear demonstration that the socially induced expectation altered the magnitude of the brain response even though the water temperature was the same for all participants. This should be of interest to those working on healthcare-related campaigns as it suggests that the induction of pain-related expectations may be a tool that can be implemented to change consumer behaviors.

Feeling rejected

To understand consumer behaviors, academics and practitioners alike need to have a clear understanding around how the brain is shaped by contextual factors. In Chapter 9, we discuss how social norms have a role to play in the decision-making process. This is one more contextual factor that indicates how the interaction with the environment determines behaviors. Using fMRI Klucharev et al. (2009) provide evidence that conformity (changing behavior to match that of others) follows the principles of learning by reinforcement, indicating that how others respond to what we do or consume is an important part of determining why we do it. This is also most likely linked to people’s desire to avoid social rejection. Social rejection has been associated with activation of the anterior cingulate cortex (an area associated with affective pain and response inhibition) consistent with there being a relationship between the strength of activation and self-reports on how upset a person is by rejection (Eisenberger, 2012). In an fMRI study conducted by Eisenberger and Lieberman (2004), participants were asked to play a game of catch with other people via a computer-generated task. The researchers controlled whether the other players would allow the participants to participate in throwing the ball (social inclusion). In some cases, the other players would toss the ball repeatedly back and forth to one another without including the participants. Some participants were bothered by this and felt socially excluded. The more a participant reported feeling excluded and rejected, the greater the activity in anterior cingulate cortex. It is feasible that this also translates into consumers feeling socially excluded based on not having specific products or branded goods, especially in young individuals. This may be something that marketers should consider carefully when advertising products by creating a more inclusive advertising campaign that avoids generating possible feelings of rejection.

Benefits to other research areas

As discussed in the section on ethics, there are clear benefits of having research-based exchanges between different subject disciplines in the service of promoting high-quality consumer neuroscience research. While it is clear how consumer neuroscience may benefit from collaboration with researchers in other disciplines it is perhaps less obvious how it can help foster research in other fields and promote better understanding of human behavior. Here we consider trust as an important concept influencing purchasing decisions but also examine broader implications of research on trust for understanding human behavior more generally. This is followed by an outline of how consumer neuroscience has the potential to positively impact the fields of neurology and well-being.

Trust

Most consumers are likely to avoid purchasing items by companies and individuals that they do not trust. Thus, trust is an important area of marketing, especially as it is deemed to be a key component serving brand loyalty (e.g., Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001; Lau & Lee, 1999). There are four specific steps that may be required when people evaluate whether a person unfamiliar to them can be trusted.

●A visual evaluation of the persons’ features to assess whether they are trustworthy is associated with recruitment of the amygdala and the insula. Such evaluation may lead to feelings of uncertainty, ambiguity, or even fear (e.g., Baumgartner et al., 2008; King-Casas et al., 2005; Winston et al.,