Neuroscience: what’s it good for?

It’s only a matter of time before neuroscience methods become a standard part of what researchers do. As we at Sanoma Media Netherlands learn more about the way people interact with brands and marketing, and about how people make decisions, we realise more that we need to be going beyond the conventional research-tools.

Neuroscience-based research gives us additional insights about how consumers make decisions and therefore will lead us to improve the communications- and business-solutions we offer to our business partners.

Are neuroscience research methods able to predict 'commercial conversation' success with more accuracy than conventional research methods?
A study* considered 24 ads and a measure of increase in sales due to ad-viewing and found that, when amygdala, hippocampus and parietal activation were combined and correlated with sales increase, a correlation value of 0,93 was observed.

Sanoma's advertisers have been receptive to our neuroscience-based research because they see that they’re getting insights that they wouldn’t have got beforehand from a regular survey.

When are which neuroscience research methods helpful?
There are lots of different ways of doing neuroscience-based research, some of which are more suited to some things than others.

A. Eyetracking - allows the computation of:
1. How quickly attention is directed to the brand on a package, or an ad (Attention)
2. How long viewers look to the brand on a package, or an ad. The number of fixations of a specific ad element is correlated with later recall of that specific object (Memory)
3. For static and dynamic stimuli, different analytics techniques need to be used.

B. fMRI - enables us to look at activation in specific brain areas. Studies have indicated that specific areas of the brain are activated during specific types of cognitive and emotional processing. Questions such as 'which one of two ads is more emotionally engaging/memorable/attention grabbing', are best addressed through fMRI. fMRI provides answers to the following questions:

1. Does a specific ad evoke an emotional reaction
2. Are elements from the ad stored in long-term memory?
3. Is an ad processed attentionally?

Emotional processing is indicated by neural activity in a network of areas in the amygdala
Memory processing is indicated by neural activity in a network of areas in the hippocampus
Attentional processing is indicated by neural activity in a network of areas in the occipital, parietal and the frontal cortex

C. EEG - Questions that can be addressed by EEG
1. Which parts of an ad are more alerting
2. Does a particular feature of an ad evoke a more positive, or a more negative reaction to the viewer
3. How does the exact time course of processing differ across different ads?

Conclusion: Investing in neuroscience research in advance of an advertising campaign is usefull to test the likely effectiveness of the material. Insight into neuroscience techniques is necessary to make good research investment choices and to be able to properly understand the outcome of the investment.

* Kennedy, R., Northhover, H. Leighton, J. Bird, G., & Lion, S. (2010). Pre-test advertising - proposing a new validity project. Copenhagen: EMAC Conference Proceedings

(Source1: Silvia Dalvit and Jane Leighton, Admap, februari 2011, pp. 12-14)
(Source2: Robert Bain, "A change of mind", www.research-live.com, april 2011)