A window to the consumer’s mind: application of functional brain imaging techniques to advertising research

Abstract

The measurement of emotional responses to advertising stimuli is a central field of advertising research. Although the role of feelings at a verbal and therefore conscious level has been investigated extensively in the marketing literature, little is known about how the human brain is involved in advertising perception processes. The methodological problems associated with previous pioneering approaches in this context seem to be mostly compensated for new methods of modern neuroscience. These methods and possible applications for advertising research are discussed in the present paper with a particular focus on the method of functional magnetic resonance imaging.