Culture Differences, Difficulties, and Challenges of the Neurophysiological Methods in Marketing Research

Abstract

Given recent technological improvements, social consumer researchers are reaching out for disciplines such as neuroscience and biomedical engineering. The purpose of this article is threefold. First, we briefly review each neurophysiological method. Second, we present cultural studies in marketing showing the importance of using neurophysiological tools in different cultures. Third, we discuss reasons why some areas have not benefitted from this interdisciplinary approach yet. For that, we interviewed Latin American researchers because of the importance of this region and the very little academic discussion on the challenges and caveats associated with conducting consumer research in this region. We conclude the article with insights to overcome these challenges.

Picking Your Brains: Where and How Neuroscience Tools Can Enhance Marketing Research

“…We identify three classification criteria used in the literature for categorizing neuroscience tools. There are some similarities between some of the classifications, for instance, (Isabella et al, 2015) with (Boz et al, 2017) or (Wang and Minor, 2008) with (Bercea, 2013) and (Harris et al, 2018); we observe that those authors chose different criteria to group consumer neuroscience tools. As shown in Table 1, previous studies group consumer neuroscience tools in different number of levels (2, 3, or 4) on the base of (1) type of measurements (e.g., behavioral, physiological, neurophysiological), (2) type of neuronal activity (neuronal activity outside or inside the brain), (3) brain activity recorded (e.g., metabolic or electric), (4) no brain activity, or (5) manipulate neuronal activity.…”

“…E.g., some authors describe eye tracking, heart rate and electrodermal activity (skin conductance) as tools, instead of properties of the human body or, more precisely, changes in eye movements, muscle contraction of the heart and electrical properties of the skin (Wiles and Cornwell, 1991;Braithwaite et al, 2013;Ramsøy, 2015). Some authors also refer to the Implicit Association Test as a tool, however, the IAT is a test that can be used to measure the strength of differential association of two or more target 3 3 2 4 2 3 3 Electroencephalography (Wang and Minor, 2008) BWA (Bercea, 2013) EBAc (Isabella et al, 2015) NPy (Ramsøy, 2015) NIm (Harris et al, 2018) NPy (Boz et al, 2017) EBAc (Lim, 2018) NAc ( concepts with an attribute (Greenwald et al, 1998;Ramsøy, 2015). Finally, Lim (2018) consider neurotransmitters (NT) as consumer neuroscience methods.…”

“…Physiological tools can measure voluntary and involuntary reflexes such as fixating and tracking visual stimuli or movements of the mimetic musculature of the face (facial expressions) (Global Harmonization Task Force, 2012 ). Physiological tools (or methods) include electrocardiogram (ECG), electrodermal activity (EDA), participants' facial muscles fEMG, eye-tracker (ET) and voice pitch analysis (VOPAN) (Isabella et al, 2015 ; Boz et al, 2017 ; Stasi et al, 2018 ). Neurophysiological tools (or methods) measure and record brain activity to study consumer behavior (Boz et al, 2017 ).…”

“…Based on the above considerations, we propose a new classification following Isabella et al ( 2015 ) and Ramsøy ( 2015 ) classifications. Figure 4 shows that consumer neuroscience tools can be divided in three categories, namely: Behavioral, Physiological, Neurophysiological.…”

O Uso de Biomarcadores em Pesquisas de Marketing

“…Essa consideração sugere que um fator relevante a ser considerado é a possibilidade de uso sincronizado de múltiplas ferramentas, aspecto este que possibilita análises complementares, de modo a ter-se uma visão mais integrada do fenômeno em estudo. Outro ponto comum no uso dessas ferramentas é a composição de times multidisciplinares de pesquisa e da condução ética da mesma (Isabela, Mazzon, & Dimoka, 2015).…”