Critics have raised concerns over the usefulness and ethics of this type of marketing research. Discuss both sides of the debate surrounding this methodology.
Picture yourself with wires hooked up to your head or entering a magnetic tube that can see inside your brain. You must be undergoing some medical test, right? Think again—it’s marketing research! Marketing research is becoming more like science fiction with a new field called neuromarketing, which uses technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to peer into consumers’ brains in an attempt to understand cognitive and affective responses to marketing stimuli. One company, Thinkingcraft, uses a methodology called “neurographix” to help marketers develop messages that fit the way customers think. The Omnicon advertising agency uses “neuroplanning” to determine the appropriate media mix for a client. One study found that consumers preferred Pepsi over Coke in blind taste tests but preferred Coke when they could see the names of the brands tasted. Different areas of the brain were activated when they knew the brand compared to when they did not, suggesting that what marketers make us believe is more persuasive than what our own taste buds tell us.