Influences on consumers’ decision making and recognition memory: An investigation using fMRI, EEG and behavioural methods

Abstract

Neuromarketing utilizes a variety of neuroimaging technologies, such as electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to deeply understand consumers’ neurological responses to marketing stimuli. For this research, a behavioural study was first performed based on consumers’ preferences for different models of cars, in order to find out whether advertisements presented in different formats will have any influence on this. The obtained results of this behavioural study were unexpected, and there was a difference in the opposite direction to that predicted. The mean value of rating of preference for the plain images was higher than the one of the same car image in a car magazine and fashion magazine. Furthermore, the fashion magazine image had slightly higher preference ratings compared to the car magazine. The strongest predictor in a binary regression was the car model itself, independent of context: thus cars were a heterogeneous product for these consumers even for models within a single car body shape and price band. In the second study, Functional magnetic resonance images (fMRI) were acquired while subjects (n=20) made choices during a stimulated purchase decision experiment, which was designed to assess the effect of brand sales volume and pricing information. The behavioural data indicated that the pricing information of packaged and branded snack products influenced decisions. The increased fMRI activations in left and right insula, frontal pole, putamen, and visual cortex were related to brand sales volume. However, the neural correlates of pricing information did not reach to significant levels of activation in factorial ANOVA of fMRI data. The data were interpreted as showing that the sales volume of products -as aggregate market measure - influences brain areas associated with emotional processing during a purchase decision task. This effect might be based on cultural familiarity or prior exposure to products, or it might be based on feelings about the products or brands induced through social influences including advertising. Therefore, the third experiment was an EEG experiment using an old/new recognition task developed from the fMRI experiment, to test the effect of sales volume of product and pricing information on recognition memory. The experiment was replicated in two participant groups under encoding conditions of products sales volume alone and with pricing information. The results showed that greater positivity to hits over left frontal electrodes and greater positivity to correct rejections over right frontal electrodes. In addition, smaller FN400 amplitudes to true recognition than false recognition was elicited in both groups. On top of that, a greater positivity for high sales volume items was found in the recognition interval in comparisons of high and low sales volume items in the comparisons of time course and scalp topography. It was concluded that products with higher sales volume elicited a frontal familiarity effect (FN400), but the results were also strongly influenced by the inclusion of flavour variants which acted as “lures” because of similarity of packaging to “old” items. The results confirm the hypothesis that effects on recognition memory are a possible cause of the neural and behavioural correlates of market-aggregate statistics of higher-selling products.