Summary
Sept 2019 (Vol. 59, Issue 3): NEUROMARKETING

Building a Foundation for Neuromarketing and Consumer Neuroscience Research: How Researchers Can Apply Academic Rigor to the Neuroscientific Study of Advertising Effects
The JAR in previous years has published work that scrutinizes the methods used in neuromarketing and consumer neuroscientific research. In a new wrinkle on that theme, a Danish consultant to leading corporations offers a framework for analysis that raises the bar on the academic rigor involved. Thomas Zoëga Ramsoy’s (Neurons, Inc.) examines the problems inherent in a field that he observes are plagued by:

• “Methodological differences,
• Conceptual inconsistencies,
• A lack of systematic validation of neuroscience-based metrics, and
• Questionable business practices.”

Ramsoy explores “symptoms of a discipline that is in need of rigor and maturation” as it attempts to build an effective foundation from which “neuromarketing and consumer neuroscience can become a valid, coherent field of conduct.”

The author proposes that neuroscience in marketing needs to:

• Provide a way to ensure that basic research is translated, validated, and tested against the initial claims;
• Make better distinctions “among basic, translational, and applied research … (that will) … allow researchers to better navigate the different types of insight and how they can be used for inspiration and for application;
• “Clear the conceptual confusion that this field is littered with;
• “Have a rigorous means of ensuring the validity of neurometric approaches and measures.”

Finally, Ramsoy urges marketers to:

• Employ the language of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, “because it has the longest and most substantial research on the faculties of the mind”;
• Use collaborative efforts “to reduce conceptual confusion and increase the validity of neuromarketing and consumer neuroscience.”

Read the full JAR article here.