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fMRI + Marketing = Consumer Control?
anonomouse writes "NYT magazine has an interesting article on the use of neuro-imagery in marketing. Best (old) quote: 'Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I don't know which half'. Good, bad, whatever? Does this bode well for job opportunities for the new crops of cognitive systems graduates? Most importantly, what does brain state tell us about behavior, if anything?"
A /. will analyze adds different. He/She will:
1. See if they can use the product being advertise.
2. Check if there is a free alternative.
3. Check Google/Google groups for negative comments about the product.
4. Search Google/Google groups for competitive product.
6. Do an on-line merchant price comparison.
5. Check their bank account balance on-line and see if they have dough. Some of them will actually start doing spread sheet calculation to see how it fits to the overall monthly budget.
6. Buy the product if it is deemed worthy.
Your average Joe on the other hand will:
1. See and add while watching Survivor.
2. Think the product is very good because the add was cool.
3. Go out and buy the product the next day.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
It seems that technology is becoming more and more...invasive is the wrong word, never the less its the only one that comes to mind. There are so few area's of life that have not been affected by technology. This is another example of how wide spread and diversified technology has become. I'll reserve my judgement on whether this is a good or a bad thing, but to much dependance on anything is never a good thing.
Lines of thinking that lead to Terminator style future scenarios are probably paranoid on my part but at this point in time a technological failure on a widespread basis would cripple not just the US economy but economies world wide. It's part of the price that we pay for globalization.
fMRI is a great research technique -- I've worked with it for years -- but I think that zealous companies that want to find the best way to tickle comsumers' brains are going to be pretty disappointed in fMRI as a marketing research tool. (And at $400+/hr, their disappointment is going to cost them . .
What these companies want is to be able to look at a scan of someone viewing/thinking about their product and to then be able to say, "Aha, he really wants this!", or, "She is debating on whether shee needs this," or even perhaps, "This product makes him feel secure."
That's bullshit -- its mindreading -- and given what we know about the brain and the signals that can be read in an fMRI, it can't be done. Perhaps one day, far in the future, something like that will be possible. Right now, though, people are still debating what exactly it means (in terms of neural activity) when you see a brain region "light up" in an fMRI scan. And even if we could know how exactly fMRI signals and neural activity relate, there's still a
-q