International Journal of Advertising

Special Issue: Neuromarketing in Advertising: Understanding Consumer Unconscious Responses and Behavioral Outcomes

As technology continues to advance, the field of neuromarketing has emerged as a powerful tool for optimizing advertising by understanding consumer responses that are often unconscious, unaware of, or unreported in traditional self-report questionnaires. By leveraging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), galvanic skin response (GSR), eye-tracking, facial coding, speech analysis, and the Implicit Association Test (IAT), neuromarketing provides insights into the inner processes that drive consumer decisions.

This special issue aims to explore the role of neuromarketing in advertising, examining how responses to advertising stimuli—whether related to products, services, places, people, or ideas—can inform marketing strategies and ultimately impact consumer behavior.

Neuromarketing tools effectively unveil psychological automatic responses, shedding light on what captures attention, evokes specific emotions, and influences motivations and behaviors (Ohme et al., 2010; Friedmann et al., 2024). Such indirect techniques are particularly valuable when addressing socially sensitive topics, where individuals may not be aware of how they feel, or may be biased by various biases (e.g., social desirability), which will be evident when using traditional self-report measures (Friedmann & Efrat-Treister, 2023; Jiang, Yin, & Liu, 2019;). Neuromarketing allows researchers to bypass biases and gain more accurate insights into genuine consumer responses (Xu et al., 2024).

Specifically, in the advertising realm, these implicit consumer response measurements are crucial. Ads can create bodily sensations that impact decision-making without our conscious awareness (Friedmann et al., 2024). Ads can employ multiple sensory experiences, using both visual (e.g., color and brightness of the packaging; Milosavljevic et al., 2012) and audible elements (Ausin et al., 2021), as well as striving to trigger other senses in ads (e.g., touch, smell, and taste). The impact of various sensory stimuli in ads on attention, emotions, and memorable experiences that influence consumers on a deeper level is an area where research is lacking (Bigne et al., 2021). This is especially important as consumers are not always aware of their bodily sensations and are unable to evaluate their real psychological and behavioral impact when asked by traditional self-report measurements.

Though neuromarketing can provide insights into consumer authentic preferences and biases, it also raises questions about consumer autonomy and privacy. Further research into the ethical implications and best practices for neuromarketing in advertising is required (Stanton, Sinnott-Armstrong, & Huettel., 2017). In the quest to understand the intricacies of consumer behavior, it has become imperative for research to offer theoretical and strategic insights into the applications of neuromarketing in advertising. As a result, submissions related to a broad range of neuromarketing topics are welcome in this special issue.

We welcome discussions around the opportunities and challenges that neuromarketing faces in advancing advertising research and practice. Given the expanding research on the topic, how can we leverage neuromarketing techniques to create more effective advertising? Discussion points surrounding the following areas are encouraged:

• Neuromarketing techniques and their applications in commercial and non-commercial advertising (e.g., fMRI, EEG, GSR, eye-tracking, facial coding, speech analysis, IAT)
• Implicit responses to advertising featuring socially sensitive topics (e.g., controversial ads that violate norms)
• Implicit responses to AI-generated advertising
• Sensory marketing in advertising: understanding unconscious responses to the senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste)
• Emotional valence and arousal and advertising effectiveness
• Attention and memory processes in response to advertising stimuli
• Comparing explicit (self-report) and implicit (neuromarketing) measurements for advertising effectiveness
• Segmentation-based differences (e.g., cross-cultural, gender, social identities, personalities, or generational differences) in implicit responses to advertising
• Ethical considerations in neuromarketing research and practice

References

1. Ausin, J. M., Bigne, E., Marín, J., Guixeres, J., & Alcaniz, M. (2021). The background music-content congruence of TV advertisements: a neurophysiological study. European Research on Management and Business Economics, 27(2), 100154.
2. Bigne, E., Simonetti, A., Ruiz, C., & Kakaria, S. (2021). How online advertising competes with user-generated content in TripAdvisor. A neuroscientific approach. Journal of Business Research, 123, 279-288.
3. Friedmann, E., & Efrat-Treister, D. (2023). Gender bias in STEM hiring: implicit in-group gender favoritism among male managers. Gender & Society, 37(1), 32-64.‏
4. Friedmann, E., Weiss-Sidi, M., and Solodoha, E. (2024). Unveiling impact dynamics: discriminatory brand advertisements, stress responses, and the call for ethical marketing practices. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 79, 103851.
5. Jiang, L., Yin, D., & Liu, D. (2019). Can joy buy you money? The impact of the strength, duration, and phases of an entrepreneur’s peak displayed joy on funding performance. Academy of Management Journal, 62(6), 1848-1871.‏
6. Milosavljevic, M., Navalpakkam, V., Koch, C., & Rangel, A. (2012). Relative visual saliency differences induce sizable bias in consumer choice. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(1), 67-74.
7. Ohme, R., Reykowska, D., Wiener, D., & Choromanska, A. (2010). Application of frontal EEG asymmetry to advertising research. Journal of Economic Psychology, 31(5), 785-793.
8. Stanton, S. J., Sinnott-Armstrong, W., & Huettel, S. A. (2017). Neuromarketing: Ethical implications of its use and potential misuse. Journal of Business Ethics, 144, 799-811.‏
9. Xu, Z., Zhang, M., Zhang, P., Luo, J., Tu, M., & Lai, Y. (2023). The neurophysiological mechanisms underlying brand personality consumer attraction: EEG and GSR evidence. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 73, 103296.