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november 29, 2003
Neuromarketing
Financial Times-artikeln A probe inside the mind of the shopper berättar om neuromarketing som använder MRI-scanning av hjärnan t.ex. för att lista ut vad som händer med oss när vi ser olika typer av produkter.
What does go through your mind as your eyes flick across the supermarket shelves before you reach out for one packet of soap powder rather than another? What is your brain doing as you leaf through a catalogue, pondering this jacket or those strappy boots?
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Now a technique known as neuromarketing promises to provide snapshot images of brain activity at crucial moments of retail choice. Scientists have been putting volunteers into MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanners to find out what goes on in their brains when they look at pictures of consumer goods.
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MRI scanners were used this year for an investigation of amodern marketing conundrum: why Coca-Cola outsells Pepsi, even though blind tasting frequently shows more people prefer the taste of Pepsi. When Read Montague of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, re-created the Pepsi Challenge blind tasting campaign of years ago, he found those who preferred Pepsi showed a five times stronger response in one of the brain's reward centres (the ventral putamen) than those who liked Coke. Then he ran the scans again but this time the volunteers knew which drink they were tasting.
"The result was remarkable," says Dr Montague. Not only did the subjects nearly all say they preferred Coke but another area at the front of the brain, the medial prefrontal cortex, which is linked with thinking and judging, lit up as well as the ventral putamen. "This showed that subjects were allowing their memories and other impressions of the drink - in other words its brand image - to shape their preferences." A strong brand, it seems, can override our taste buds.
The conclusion was that if you find what stimulates the medial prefrontal cortex you may have the basis of a successful advertising campaign.
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But the promise of neuromarketing is alluring and, rightly or wrongly, we may yet see political focus groups swept away as volunteers are herded into scanners to see which politicians tickle their medial prefrontal cortexes.
Se även:
Read Montague (hemsida)
BrightHouse Neurostrategies Institute
The New York Times-artikeln There's a Sucker Born in Every Medial Prefrontal Cortex (from 26 oktober 2003)
In Search of the Buy Button
The science of shopping
Neuromarketing to Your Mind
Posted by hakank at november 29, 2003 09:16 FM Posted to Diverse