FEATURE: Neuromarketing
It's our emotions, not facts, that influence our purchasing choices, and marketers are now tapping into this fact to create smarter advertisements. Image: aluxum/iStockphoto How do you decide which running shoes to buy? Why do you prefer the iPhone over all other smart phones? Why did smokers crave a cigarette after watching an ad designed to turn people off smoking, while non-smokers were disgusted by it? These are the questions advertisers, marketers and market researchers are constantly faced with and Swinburne Neuroscience Professor Richard Silberstein has some of the answers. Neuromarketing or consumer neuroscience is a relatively new area of research that combines neuroscience with market research. It uses brain-measuring technology to find out what consumers really think of advertising.Until recently, market research companies had access to limited methods to assess the effectiveness of an ad. According to Professor Silberstein, these methods rely on assessment using the right hemisphere of the brain,...