Neuromarketing and Consumer Decision-Making: An fMRI Study

Abstract

The recent development of neuroscience is used as an alternative to self-report tools in understanding consumer behaviour, which are usually limited to bias and lack of consciousness regarding the inner mind. This paper examines how functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can be utilized in the field of neuromarketing to gain more insight into the mental processes in the minds of consumers when making a decision. The study examines brain functional activity in relation to product evaluation/perception, brand preference, and future action to purchase, paying specific focus to the areas of the brain concerning reward processing, emotional reaction, and cognitive control. The participants were subject to a controlled experimental design: they were displayed a range of product advertisements and branding cues at the same time as being put through an fMRI scan. The neural activation patterns were also analysed in terms of finding out by how much the processes of emotions and those of rationality interact when making a purchasing decision. The results reveal an increased brain activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens when participants were exposed to objects that they preferred choosing, which demonstrates the effectiveness of affective and reward networks in the process of shaping preferences among consumers. More importantly, there was greater engagement of higher-order cognitive processes during trade-offs and deliberation by greater activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These findings strengthen the opinion that consumer decision-making cannot be considered as totally rational or emotional, rather it is a combination of both spheres. This research has the implication to marketing planning, innovative marketing and marketing ethics of application of neuromarketing tools. This study reduces uncertainty about the neural correlates of purchasing behavior by providing empirical evidence of its neural correlates, thus furthering our knowledge regarding the nature of consumer psychology and displaying the value of fMRI in informing a data-driven marketing practice in the digital era.