The use of neuroscience tools to study consumer behavior and the decision making process in marketing has improved our understanding of cognitive, neuronal, and emotional mechanisms related to marketing-relevant behavior. However, knowledge about neuroscience tools that are used in consumer neuroscience research is scattered. In this article, we present the results of a literature review that aims to provide an overview of the available consumer neuroscience tools and classifies them according to their characteristics. We analyse a total of 219 full-texts in the area of consumer neuroscience. Our findings suggest that there are seven tools that are currently used in consumer neuroscience research. In particular, electroencephalography (EEG) and eye tracking (ET) are the most commonly used tools in the field. We also find that consumer neuroscience tools are used to study consumer preferences and behaviors in different marketing domains such as advertising, branding, online experience, pricing, product development and product experience. Finally, we identify two ready-to-use platforms, namely iMotions and GRAIL that can help in integrating the measurements of different consumer neuroscience tools simultaneously. Measuring brain activity and physiological responses on a common platform could help by (1) reducing time and costs for experiments and (2) linking cognitive and emotional aspects with neuronal processes. Overall, this article provides relevant input in setting directions for future research and for business applications in consumer neuroscience. We hope that this study will provide help to researchers and practitioners in identifying available, non-invasive and useful tools to study consumer behavior.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess whether or not electroencephalography (EEG) provides a valuable and substantial contribution to the prediction of consumer behaviour and their preferences during product consumption. In this study, the authors especially focus on individual preferences during a wine tasting experience. Design/methodology/approach A consumer neuroscience experiment was carried out with 26 participants that evaluated different red wines while their brain activity was recorded with EEG. A within-subjects design was employed and the experiment was carried out in two sessions. All participants took part in a blind taste session (no label session), in which information about the wine was not disclosed, and a normal taste session (label session), during which the bottle and its label were visible. Findings The findings suggest that EEG is a useful tool to study brain activity during product experience. EEG has high temporal resolution, low costs, small dimensions and superior manoeuvrability compared to other consumer neuroscience tools. However, it is noticed that there is a lack of solid theoretical background regarding brain areas (e.g. frontal cortex) and brain activity (e.g. brain waves) related to consumer preferences during product experience. This lack of knowledge causes several difficulties in replicating and validating the findings of other consumer neuroscience experiments for studying consumer behaviour. Originality/value The experiment presented in this paper is an exploratory study. It provides insights into the possible contribution of EEG data to the prediction of consumer behaviour during product experience.

Understanding consumers’ decision-making process is one of the most important goal in Marketing. However, the traditional tools (e,g, surveys, personal interviews and observations) used in Marketing research are often inadequate to analyse and study consumer behaviour. Since people’s decisions are influenced by several unconscious mental processes, the consumers very often do not want to, or do not know how to, explain their choices. For this reason, Neuromarketing research has grown in popularity. Neuromarketing uses both psychological and Neuroscience techniques in order to analyse the neurological and psychological mechanisms that underlying human decisions and behaviours. Hence, studying these mechanisms is useful to explain consumers’ responses to marketing stimuli.This paper (1) provides an overview of the current and previous research in Neuromarketing; (2) analyzes the use of Marginal Utility theory in Neuromarketing. In fact, there is remarkably little direct empirical evidence of the use of Marginal Utility in Neuromarketing studies. Marginal Utility is an essential economic parameter affecting satisfaction and one of the most important elements of the consumers’ decision-making process. Through the use of Marginal Utility theory, economists can measure satisfaction, which affects largely the consumer’s decision-making process. The research gap between Neuromarketing and use of Marginal Utility theory is discussed in this paper. We describe why Neuromarketing studies should take into account this parameter. We conclude with our vision of the potential research at the interaction of Marginal Utility and Neuromarketing.

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During the decision-making process, consumers notice, inspect, and visually scan different products. External characteristics of a product, such as design, packaging, label, and logo, have been shown to strongly influence how customers perceive, assess, and select a product. Marketers have put a lot of effort into determining the factors that trigger consumers’ visual attention toward products, using traditional research methods, self-reports, or observations. The use of neuroscientific tools to study consumer behavior may improve our understanding of how external characteristics influence consumers’ visual attention. Consumer neuroscience research shows that preferences for a product may already be reflected in brain activity before customers make a final decision. Using electroencephalography (EEG), we investigated whether the design of different wine labeling influences individual preferences, reflected in the neural activity related to visual attention. More specifically, we examined whether the posterior contralateral negativity (PCN) can be used to assess and predict consumers’ preferences for a specific product based on its external characteristics. The PCN is commonly used to estimate attentional selection by focusing on stimulus-side dependent EEG lateralization above parieto-occipital areas. We computed the PCN to assess whether a certain wine label caught participants’ visual attention and additionally by comparing the PCN with behavioral data (wine preferences and reaction times) to determine whether early effects of visual attention could predict participants’ final preferences for a specific label. Our findings indicate that the PCN provides relevant information on visual attention mechanisms for external characteristics, as the view of the four labels modulated PCN amplitude. We hope this study can help researchers and practitioners in examining the effects of external product characteristics on consumer choice by estimating the changes in the EEG that are related to visual attention.

Purpose Packaging and labelling have become essential to how food manufacturers generate and deliver value to customers. The information displayed on the packaging can be used to communicate to customers the properties and unique characteristics of a food product (e.g. nutrients, calories and country of origin). To achieve communication goals effectively, manufacturers need to understand how consumers evaluate products based on their attributes. In particular, companies should be aware of which specific product attributes affect consumer buying behaviour and which product attributes are more critical during food assessment. So, the paper aims to investigate consumer's behaviuor linked to typical product attributes indicated on the packaging. Design/methodology/approach The present study examines consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for a cherry jam with different attributes (brand, type of production method and price) on a sample of 2,166 Italian respondents through a choice experiment using a random parameter logit-error component model. Findings The results showed that WTP for jams can be affected by attributes such as brand, price and production methods; precisely, they indicated that the level of naturalness in the production process constitutes the main element for the consumer’s choice; however, the considerable weight that price and brand have in influencing the purchasing behaviour of the food consumer was still confirmed: in fact, a p-value of less than 0.05 was found in all cases. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that assesses the effect of different types of production on WTP for food products. In addition, this study also reflects on the importance of the level of education for consumer choice.

Abstract:The decision-making process has been analyzed in several disciplines (economics, social sciences, humanities, etc.) with the aim of creating models to help decision-makers in strategy formulation. The Organizational theory takes into account both the decision-making process of individuals and groups of a company. Numerous models have been built, which include a wide range of psychological, environmental, hierarchical factors, all of which only account the notion of rationality. In time, such concept has come to be considered pragmatically unrealistic and unachievable. Emotions have recently acquired an increasingly significant position (in the academic and economic society) as important component of the decision making-process. From this point of view neuroscience, the new branch of medical sciences could play a key role in studying individual decision-making processes. This article suggests that thanks to neuroscience it is possible to overcome current limitations in economics studies, for individual's choices, which are exclusively based on the rational component.

The study examines physiological and neuronal processes of 26 inexpert wine drinkers in order to understand how consumers judge and choose wines during product experience. We analysed if an increase in the beta band activity can be related to reward process and individual preference for a wine. The results confirmed that 1) tasting different wines modulate individual preferences and beta band activity and 2) the higher preferences for a wine corresponded to a stronger decrease in beta band oscillations.