Brain Scans Reveal Unconscious Buying Urges

An article mentioned by a neuromarketing company website explains how brain scans showed the buying intentions of users exposed to car images while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner.

John-Dylan Haynes and colleagues at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, Germany, attempted to predict which cars men would prefer to buy after viewing a variety of car pictures. Using the results from fMRI scans, the team was able to predict with 75% accuracy which cars the men would say they would prefer to buy. 

One group of men were purposely distracted while viewing car images to determine if the researchers could predict the unconscious urges to buy certain cars. Another group were not distracted while viewing. Even with distractions, the team was able to predict nearly 75% correctly which cars them men would say they would buy in a follow up QA session.

This could be valuable information to neuromarketing companies hoping to capitalize on the buying urges of the human brain during commercials. It seems the main purpose of an ad need not be apparent for many people to be marketed toward.

During your next commercial viewings, try to notice the images in the background of an odd commercial to see if this is being used already.

You can read more about this neuromarketing research at Neuromarketing Agency and New Scientist.

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