Conjoint-fMRI in neuromarketing research

Abstract

Neuromarketing studies consumers’ sensorimotor and cognitive responses to marketing stimuli. Neuromarketing methods measure brain activation when customers evaluate and view different advertisements, services, and products. First labelled as such by Smidts (2002), neuromarketing is a multidisciplinary approach that connects marketing with statistics, medicine, economics, and psychology.

Marketers serve products as bundles of benefits that are treated as attributes or tied packages of characteristics. Human brains process objects as collections of parts and features, yet individuals experience these as a seamless whole. Conjoint cards show attributes as bundles, and fMRI analyses the brain’s reactions to them. To date, this is the first method to utilise individual attributes or features from objects in neuroscience, the benefit of which has yet to be fully appreciated.

This dissertation engages with two research methods and models these in conjoint-fMRI for neuromarketing studies. Furthermore, it asks under which circumstances the conjointfMRI method can be of advantage in the field of neuromarketing. The methodological section of this dissertation focuses in particular on the conjoint-fMRI analysis model.

The conjoint-fMRI method resolves a number of neuromarketing research problems, including participants’ concentration levels, fatigue, and honesty in answers, thereby helping to diminish costs and increase the quantity of attributes used in research.