İbrahim Kuran

Silivrikapı, İstanbul / Turkey

+905395983881
İ[email protected]

RESEARCH PROPOSAL

In addition to my cover letter, I would like to submit a research proposal. In this proposal, I
demonstrate my interests in consumer neuroscience / neuromarketing. I believe that I can
work on this field in my future studies.

Consumer Neuroscience / Neuromarketing

Consumer neuroscience / neuromarketing is basically use of two different science fields to

reach an objective. It is common that two different fields come together to get better
understanding. The goal of consumer neuroscience is to adapt methods and theories from
neuroscience—combined with behavioral theories, models, and tested experimental designs
from consumer psychology and related disciplines such as behavioral decision sciences—to
develop a neuropsychologically sound theory to understand consumer behavior (Plassmann ,
Ramsøy, & Milosavljevic, 2012).

The psychological and physiological sciences have been quick to apply such techniques to
make startling advances in our understanding of the brain and cognition. However, most social
sciences have yet to adopt neuroimaging as a standard tool or procedure for research. In
particular, while economics has begun to utilize neuroimaging techniques in its research –
resulting in the creation of ‘neuroeconomics’ (e.g. Braeutigam, 2005; Kenning & Plassmann,
2005; Rustichini, 2005) – marketing science has been far slower to wake up to the benefits of
imaging research, despite both fields of study sharing many common concerns regarding
decision making and exchange (Lee, Broderick, & Chamberlain, 2007). Though marketing has
been lately adopted to neuroscientific progressions, today we are seeing that neuroscience
technologies are widely used in marketing research both in academy and in business.

Although consumer neuroscience and neuromarketing have the same objectives and use the
same methods, we come across two different terminology. Consumer neuroscience is the
researches that are done in academic circles, neuromarketing is the researches that are done
in business circles. There are some ethical concerns about applying neuroimaging techniques
to neuromarketing for the purpose of finding ‘buy button in the brain’ and ‘creating
advertising campaigns that we will be unable to resist’ (the July 2004 Editorial of Nature
Neuroscience). Although some have argued for the existence of a “buy button” in the brain,
current evidence suggests that the cognitive processes associated with purchase decisions are
multi factorial and cannot be reduced to a single area of activation (Ariely & Berns, 2010). The
application of neuroscience to marketing may form a basis for understanding how human
beings create, store, recall, and relate to information such as brands in everyday life.
Furthermore, it may be possible to discover whether certain aspects of advertisements and
marketing activities trigger negative effects, such as overconsumption (Lee, Broderick, &
Chamberlain, 2007).
Neuromarketing has recently gained considerable popularity. Because traditional marketing
research approaches (e.g. focus groups, preference questionnaires) do not yield desired
results. These traditional methods pass over the underlying reasons. People are not prone to
answer a questionnaire. Even though it is answered, people can lie or may not know what is
the real thing that affect them. That will probably increase the cost and the time of marketing
research. In the past, neuromarketing technologies used to be expensive comparing to
applying a traditional marketing approach. Today these technologies are getting cheaper and
the number of specialists in neuromarketing is raising. Due to this reason, it is very applicable
for companies and academics to find out the underlying reasons.

Neuromarketing Technologies

Functional MRI (fMRI)

The technique uses an MRI scanner to measure the blood oxygenation level-dependent
(BOLD) signal. The BOLD changes are generally correlated with the underlying synaptic
activity. fMRI has a substantial advantage in resolving small structures and those that are deep
in the brain. However, some important brain regions, especially the orbitofrontal cortex, are
affected by signal artefacts that may reduce the ability to obtain useful information (Ariely &
Berns, 2010).

Electroencephalography (EEG)

EEG uses electrodes applied to the scalp and measures changes in the electrical field in the
brain region underneath. EEG has very high temporal resolution (milliseconds) and can
therefore detect brief neuronal events. Apart from the low spatial resolution, EEG has poor
sensitivity for deep brain structures (Ariely & Berns, 2010).

Magnetoencephalography (MEG)

An expensive cousin of EEG, MEG measures changes in the magnetic fields induced by
neuronal activity. Thus, MEG has the same advantage of high temporal resolution and,
because the magnetic field is less distorted by the skull than is the electrical field, it has better
spatial resolution than EEG. Like EEG, MEG is most sensitive to superficial cortical signals
(primarily in the sulci). MEG requires a magnetically shielded room and superconducting
quantum interference detectors to measure the weak magnetic signals in the brain (Ariely &
Berns, 2010).

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

TMS uses an iron core, often in the shape of a toroid wrapped in electrical wire, to create a
magnetic field strong enough to induce electrical currents in underlying neurons when placed
on the head. TMS can be used as a single pulse, paired pulse or repetitive stimulation, and the
neuronal effects range from facilitation to inhibition of synaptic transmission. As a research
tool, TMS has been used to study the causal role of specific brain regions in particular tasks by
temporarily taking them ‘offline’ (Ariely & Berns, 2010).
Neuromarketing is a vastly growing field but it still consists of so many unexplored areas. My
main motivation is to apply neuromarketing approach to digital in my future studies. With the
help of recent technologies, we are able to collect data tremendously. The problem is what to
do with ‘Big Data’, how to interpret it. As well as digital numbers and statistics,
neuromarketing could help us to interpret that collected data. A study of (Bern & Moore,
2012) could be an example of explaining that claim, in this study used a small group of
subjects' neural responses to music to predict subsequent market level impact in form of
commercial success of the songs (using sales data for a period of three years after the
experiment). Interestingly, subjective liking ratings of songs did not correlate with future sales
data, but the neural response did (i.e., brain activation within the nucleus accumbens)
(Plassmann , Ramsøy, & Milosavljevic, 2012).

References
Ariely, D., & Berns, G. S. (2010). Neuromarketing: the hope and hype of neuroimaging in
business. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11, 284-292.
Bern, G., & Moore, S. E. (2012). A neural predictor of cultural popularity. Journal of
Consumer Psychology, 22, 154–160.
Braeutigam, S. (2005). Neuroeconomics—From neural systems to economic behaviour. Brain
Research Bulletin, 67, 355-360.
Kenning, P., & Plassmann, H. (2005). NeuroEconomics: An overview from an economic
perspective. Brain Research Bulletin, 67, 343-354.
Lee, N., Broderick, A. J., & Chamberlain, L. (2007). What is ‘neuromarketing’? A discussion
and agenda for future research. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 63, 199–
204.
Plassmann , H., Ramsøy, T. Z., & Milosavljevic, M. (2012). Branding the brain: A critical
review and outlook. Journal of Consumer Psychology 22, 18-36.
Rustichini, A. (2005). Neuroeconomics: Present and future. Games and Economic Behavior,
52, 201-212.
the July 2004 Editorial of Nature Neuroscience. (n.d.).