Fundamentals of neuromarketing: an interdisciplinary field that changes how marketers understand consumers

Neuromarketing or consumer neuroscience has recently emerged as a supplement to existing marketing methods, thanks to the more widely available and advanced technologies that help probe consumers’ brains, such as neuroimaging techniques (i.e., electroencephalography – EEG, magnetoencephalography – MEG, and functional magnetic resonance imaging – fMRI) and methodologies to measure physiological responses (i.e., eye-tracking, skin conductance response, body temperature, and facial effective coding) and pharmacological responses (dopamine, oxytocin, and testosterone). The purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate neuromarketing’s organic inception due to the rise in popularity of neuroeconomics, which leads marketers, who have worked interminably to better understand consumers’ needs and preferences, to merge them into the interdisciplinary field of neuromarketing. Furthermore, thanks to the availability of the aforementioned technologies, neuromarketers can study the relationships and connections between consumers’ responses and specific marketing stimuli during advertisements or product selection and evaluation before purchasing as well as between these actional and emotional responses and the associated brain areas. Public studies from scientific journals and practical applications from businesses using neuroimaging, physiological, and pharmacological measurements will illustrate such relationships and connections. However, since consumer neuroscience remains a field of research rather than a conclusive result, it is usually combined with existing marketing tactics to give more insights. Thus, the studies and examples in this thesis will surround the four Ps of marketing. Lastly, this thesis discusses the skepticism the interdisciplinary study faces toward its efficacy as well as the critics concerning its ethical issues about consumers’ freedom of purchasing decisions and research participants’ data security. It also covers which measures and code of ethics should be taken into consideration to avoid misuse and exploitation of neuromarketing, resulting in it being banned like its predecessor, subliminal messaging