Inside the Heart of Neuromarketing: A Comparison of Selected Studies and Look into the Effects of Product Role on the Human Brain

Abstract

Neuromarketing can help companies increase revenue and sales, and more accurately target customers with the products and services that are right for them. Through a systematic literature review, the present paper provides an overview of the history of neuromarketing, from the acknowledgment of the inner processes dominating decision-making to the introduction in marketing research of neuroscientific instruments providing direct insight into the brain of the consumer. The aim is to identify common grounds and divergences of different experiments while offering an overview of the core elements and contributions to the development of science. The analysis of ten selected experiments led to the definition of the five key elements that were used as starting points for a structured comparison among the studies. The results showed the relevance of data quality for experimental significance, together with the importance of the role played by instrumental choice in the output, revealing different outcomes according to whether electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) were employed.