Science Daily: Brain Scans Could Be Marketing Tool of the Future
Monday, March 8th, 2010Science Daily reports on a new study by researchers at Duke University and Emory University concerning a possible targeted behavioral advertising tool.
So-called “neuromarketing” takes the tools of modern brain science, like the functional MRI, and applies them to the somewhat abstract likes and dislikes of customer decision-making.
Though this raises the specter of marketers being able to read people’s minds (more than they already do), neuromarketing may prove to be an affordable way for marketers to gather information that was previously unobtainable, or that consumers themselves may not even be fully aware of, says Dan Ariely, the James B. Duke professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke. [...]
Neuromarketing may never be cheap enough to replace focus groups and other methods used to assess existing products and advertising, but it could have real promise in gauging the conscious and unconscious reactions of consumers in the design phase of such varied products as “food, entertainment, buildings and political candidates,” Ariely says.

