This is your brain on neuromarketing: reflections on a decade of research

ABSTRACT

In this commentary, we reflect on the last decade of research in the field of neuromarketing and present a schematic illustration of the basic process of a typical neuromarketing study. We then identify three critical points of interest in this illustration that have not received enough discussion in neuromarketing-relevant literature, and which we consider to be somewhat problematic. These are the dominance of event-based designs in neuromarketing, the potential of alternative modalities in neuromarketing and the current focus on reverse inference in neuromarketing. We argue that, taken together, these points have substantive implications for the development of a more reflective neuromarketing, which in turn has greater potential to make a positive impact on marketing knowledge, marketing practice and public perceptions of marketing activity in general.

KEYWORDS:

• Neuromarketing
• consumer neuroscience
• brain activity
• fMRI
• reverse inference

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nick Lee

Prof. Nick Lee (BCA, BCA (hons.), PhD) is a Professor of Marketing at Warwick Business School. His research interests include sales management, social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, research methodology and philosophy of science. Prof. Lee is the Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Marketing, and the Associate Editor of the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management. Nick has received multiple awards for his research and published over 60 articles since 2005 in journals such as Organizational Research Methods, Organization Science, the Journal of Management, Human Relations, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Business Ethics and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. His work has received over 4000 citations, while also featuring in popular outlets such as The Times, the Financial Times and Forbes and on numerous radio and television programmes. He is also the author of Doing Business Research and Business Statistics using Excel and SPSS. He received his Ph.D. from Aston University (UK) in 2003.

Leif Brandes

Dr Leif Brandes is an Assistant Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School. His research interests include judgement and decision-making, online word of mouth and information transparency. Leif’s research has appeared in journals such as Management Science, Marketing Letters, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Series A) and Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. His work has also been mentioned in popular outlets such as Wall Street Journal, Ivey Business Journal, the Independent, the Sun, Yahoo! and BBC Radio. Leif holds a Ph.D. from the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and a Master in Mathematical Finance from the University of Konstanz (Germany).

Laura Chamberlain

Dr Laura Chamberlain is a Principal Teaching Fellow of Marketing at Warwick Business School. Her research interests include consumer behaviour, neuromarketing, social marketing, advertising, research methodology and experimental design. Her work has appeared in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Academy of Marketing Science Review, BMC Neurology, Journal of Marketing Education, International Journal of Psychophysiology and Annals of New York Academy of Science. Laura holds a PhD from Aston University (UK).

Carl Senior

Carl Senior joined Aston University in 2004, after holding a visiting fellowship in Behavioural Sciences at the National Institutes of Health, USA. He has over 100 publications and has contributed to securing over £3M in various research income. He has served as Associate Editor for the journals Cognitive Neuroscience, Frontiers in Cognitive Science and The Leadership Quarterly and was elected a Fellow of the British Psychological Society in 2015. He is currently a member of the Aston Behavioural Insights Group.