Looking at the Brain: How Consumers Process Advertising

Introduction

Advertising plays an important role in the business world as it influences attention and recall, as well as consumer attitude toward product purchase and intention of purchase (Connell, Brucks, & Nielsen, 2014). Moreover, commercials are a key tool of increasing brand awareness and product sales (Taylor, 2013). Therefore, if designed properly, advertising can have a persuasive effect on the purchase and direct consumption of specific products.

Advertising effectiveness research has assessed the impact of several media features on media effects such as attitude, intention, recall and choice (color: O’Connor, 2015; packaging: Van der Laan, De Ridder, Viergever, & Smeets, 2012; commercial content and format: Martínez-Fiestas, Viedma del Jesus, Sánchez-Fernández, & Montoro-Rios, 2015). Most of this research is based on findings gleaned from questionnaires, surveys or focus groups, namely self-report tools. However, do these traditional techniques measure consumer response in real time, second by second? Moreover, can an item of a scale be misunderstood because of its translation to a different language? And are these self-reports recommended for g sensitive data such as sexual orientation or net income? What is more, are respondents conscious and rational as to their choices or do they come to decisions unconsciously? When trying to respond to these questions, it is clear that traditional communication research has left aside key factors in the development of attitudes or intentions toward advertisements and, therefore, must be complemented with more accurate and objective techniques.

To overcome the limitations of declarative techniques in measuring advertising effectiveness, a great amount of communication research has recently resorted to neurological tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) to uncover the neural bases of cognitive, emotional, and social processes, as well as to offer new insights into the unconscious processing of advertising information. Specifically, a number of papers have recently drawn upon cognitive neuroscience literature in the framework of advertising persuasiveness research. These studies identify a set of features that communication specialists can exploit to determine the effectiveness of stimuli or capture hidden human mental processes triggered by messages.

Aware of the benefits offered by neurological tools, advertising researchers have explored the neural effects of the diverse typologies of messages such as gain/loss-framed, deceptive, subliminal, or brand-related messages. Hence, with the intention of clarifying the main findings of recent neuroscience research on advertising persuasiveness, this chapter aims to: 1) outline the conclusions of previous consumer neuroscience analyses exploring the unconscious mechanisms through which consumers process advertising language ; 2) explain the managerial implications of the neurological findings by indicating the elements of advertising which are processed as more persuasive, and therefore more useful in the design of successful promotional strategies, and; 3) reflect on the ethical implications of the use of neuroscience in elucidating advertising persuasion.