Neuromarketing uses brain imaging techniques to understand consumer decision making. It measures how the brain reacts to marketing stimuli and how those reactions influence purchasing behaviors. Neuromarketing is based on neuroscience, behavioral economics, and social psychology. It provides insights that contradict the traditional view of rational decision making, and instead shows that most decisions are made intuitively and unconsciously based on emotion, familiarity and processing fluency. Marketing works by leveraging these non-conscious processes through repetition, association, and novelty rather than rational persuasion.

1. Neuromarketing
Kamil Wyczynski
Oxford Brookes University

2. What is neuromarketing?
What is isn’t…

3. Distinction between marketing and
neuromarketing
Marketing is a field devoted to influencing people to like
things, and ultimately to buy things, including things they may
not need. Marketers are aware that people have brains.
Marketing, therefore, is now and always has been devoted
to influencing brains.
Neuromarketing is a new way to measure whether and how
marketing is working. It’s based on a more realistic
understanding of how consumers’ brains operate

4. What is neuromarketing good for?
In a broad sense for 3 things:
✓ It can tell us what’s going on in people’s brains while they’re
experiencing a marketing stimulus (any marketing material
presented in a controlled research test)
✓ It can tell us how brains react to marketing stimuli
presented in different situational contexts (i.e. alone or next
to competing products, at different price points, in a store
versus online etc.)
✓ It can tell us how brains translate those reactions into
consumer decisions and behaviors (such as buying a product
or switching loyalty to a new brand)

5. Brain science and the foundations of
neuromarketing
Based on 3 areas of brain science:
Neuroscience - The study of the human nervous system, including the
brain, its anatomy, functions, and the peripheral nervous system it
controls. Neuroscience is most relevant to understanding the brain
states and physiological reactions that accompany exposure to brands,
products, and marketing materials.
Behavioral economics - The study of how people make economic
decisions in the real world. Situational influences on consumer choice
and behavior.
Social psychology - The study of how people think and act in the (real
or imagined) presence of other people.

7. What we know now that we didn’t
know then
In the past marketers perceived consumers as
rational decision makers with a little bit of
irrational emotion added…
This rational consumer
model reminds me of
someone…
Live long and consume

8. Mr Spock goes shopping…

9. And when Mr Spock shops…
• He thinks in terms of information
• He can retrieve this information, completely and accurately, at any point after he has
encountered it
• He rationally determines his preferences
• He uses cost-benefit calculations to make a purchase decision at the point of
purchase
• His preferences can be changed if, and only if, he is presented with new information
that alters his beliefs about products
• Marketing and advertising communications are messages that present rational,
logical arguments about brands and products
• The only way marketing and advertising communications can influence Mr. Spock is if
he consciously recalls their persuasive arguments.

10. Rational models for rational marketing
to rational consumers
AIDA model – Attention, Interest, Desire, Action
DAGMAR model – Awareness, Comprehension,
Conviction, Action
… and many other!
They are successful when dealing with a rational
consumer… but that happens rarely

11. How do we really interpret the world?

12. Replacing the Rational Consumer
Model with the Intuitive Consumer
Model
Makes his/her decisions based on emotional responses to
situations.
Knows in his gut the right thing to do even when difficult to
articulate it clearly.
Sounds like…
McCoy? ;)

13. So when McCoy goes shopping…
• He doesn’t do a lot of deliberate thinking about the products he buys at the grocery
store
• He retrieves feelings about products and brands and — to a limited extent — factual
information, in a loose and spotty way.
• His preferences are largely implicit and based on habit, his friends’ opinions, and his
own product experience
• He makes most of his purchase decisions spontaneously and without much deliberate
thought at the point of purchase.
• His product and brand preferences can be changed, not so much by providing new
information as by changing the situation within which he does his shopping.
• Marketing and advertising can have a significant impact on Dr. McCoy, but they tend
to do so in nonconscious ways outside his awareness.
• The primary way that marketing and advertising influence Dr. McCoy is indirectly,
through repetitive association of positive themes and images with the advertised
brand or product.

14. The intuitive consumer: Non-conscious
processes underlying consumer behavior
The brain avoids spending mental effort which s the amount
of cognitive ability to act in the world (including acting as
consumers). And this notion of saving mental energy shows
itself in many ways in consumer behavior:
• Efficiency
• Novelty
• Familiarity
• Processing fluency

15. Interpreting our world efficiently
Our brains take up 3% of body weight but use
up to 20% of calories… so we had to evolve to
run it efficiently.
Daniel Kahneman and his System 1 and System 2
help us to understand an important aspect of
mental efficiency – lazy control

16. Interpreting our world efficiently
Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2
The way in which the brain produces decisions…
The conscious mindThe non-conscious mind

17. Interpreting our world efficiently
Our brains were designed to avoid using the
conscious mind unless absolutely necessary.
That is why our conscious mind (system 2) has
only lazy control over non-conscious processing
(system 1).
We are running on autopilot most if the time!!!

18. Interpreting our world efficiently
Show on few slides how does it look in real life…
Make it interesting

19. Catching our eye with novelty
Our minds don’t passively observe the world – they
proactively predict and expect
Something different from our expectations will draw our
attention.
A byproduct of attention is vigilance, because something new
and unknown may be dangerous or harmful.
As we learn more about novel things in our environment, our
orientation toward them changes. They become less novel,
and we pass from the attraction of novelty to the comfort of
familiarity.

20. Comforting us with familiarity
When something is familiar, we can allocate much
less mental effort toward it.
We like things even because of repeated exposure…
without any other reasons.
Studies show, that consumers generally unaware of
this exposure effect are quite willing to attribute (or
misarttibute) their positive feelings toward a
familiar brand it its inherent qualities.

21. Comforting us with familiarity
Understanding the power of familiarity and the mere exposure effect has at
least three big implications for marketing, advertising, and consumer
behavior:
✓ Familiarity is a key element of brand equity, accounting for much of the
marketplace advantage of leading brands
✓ Mere exposure provides a mechanism for getting a product or brand from
novel to familiar. Many marketing tactics, such as free samples or
“introductory offers,” have the effect of increasing exposure to new products,
which marketers hope will translate into familiarity, liking, and repeat
purchases
✓ Mere exposure goes a long way toward explaining why advertising works,
even when people swear that they aren’t influenced by advertising at all

22. Comforting us with familiarity
There are limits to positive emotional impact of
familiarity – liking does not increase with
repetition forever!
At some point repetition can become irritating,
boring and negative -> and we start to avoid it