Buyology

Why People Buy What They Buy: The Promise of Neuromarketing

Every day you see, hear, read and sometimes smell countless messages that are trying to persuade you to buy...and you forget most of them immediately. These messages were designed to influence your behavior. Why don’t they work? And why do some messages stick better than others? Asking people directly doesn’t help, because they really don’t know. They may try to offer conscious explanations for their purchasing choices, but, in reality, a complex array of subconscious thoughts and feelings drive buying decisions.

For a long time, researchers who wanted to explain and influence consumer behavior were limited to “quantitative and qualitative” study methods. Now, “neuromarketing,” which uses brain scans, offers the new possibility of learning what’s really happening inside people’s heads and why they act as they do. Some fear that this approach threatens individual freedom; others see it as just one more tool which, like any other, people can use either ethically or unethically.

The most extensive neuromarketing study to date focused on smoking. It clearly showed the method’s inherent possibilities. Cigarette...