the influence of neuromarketing on consumer behavior

Abstract

After describing the aims of Neuromarketing, defined by Lee et al. (2007) as 'the application of neuroscientific methods to analyze and understand human behaviour in relation to markets and marketing exchanges', its implemented methodologies and the most critical ethical considerations, we introduce the concept of implicit attitude, i.e. an association in memory between an object and the evaluation an individual makes about that object (Fazio et al. 1982). The unconscious and automatic activation of attitudes plays a central role on the definition of actual behavior. Due to such implicitness, explicit ways of measuring an individual's response to a stimulus are no longer appropriate to capture attitudes' true essence. Therefore, indirect measures - such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT) - are increasingly implemented to capture the real attitudes of respondents. The aim of this thesis is to compare the data obtained though a survey and an IAT about the consumption habits of two well known brands of shampoo in order to assess if explicit responses coincide with implicit ones or not.