Companies around the world rely on various marketing strategies to make their brands more appealing to customers, and now, according to a study published in the online journal PLoS ONE, they may have an actual physiological method they can use to test their success.
Many marketing strategies rely on self-reporting by consumers, which can be biased and unreliable. To combat these shortcomings, the authors of the recent work, led by Peter Walla of University of Newcastle in Australia, showed that the brains' emotional and motivational reaction accurately reflect whether a study subject likes or dislikes a particular brand.
Strikingly, the brains' reaction is measured without requiring any explicit verbal responses. "Self-reported measures of emotion are cognitively polluted", says Dr. Walla, and based on these results, the authors suggest that companies may be able to improve their product development by introducing such measures.
Citation: Walla P, Brenner G, Koller M (2011) Objective Measures of Emotion Related to Brand Attitude: A New Way to Quantify Emotion-Related Aspects Relevant to Marketing. PLoS ONE 6(11): e26782. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0026782
Financial Disclosure: This study was financially supported (money to pay subjects for participation) by the Bank Austria through Wolfgang Ruediger. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interest Statement: The authors have read the journal's policy and have the following conflicts. The Bank Austria (through Wolfgang Ruediger) gave the authors money to pay the study participants for their participation. The content of the study has no specific relation to the Bank Austria. Financial support was only given to be acknowledged. Peter Walla is offering neuroconsulting services through the company Neuroconsult. He is not employed, but is the founder of this company. Some of the work was undertaken in the frame of this company, which is why it has to be included in the affiliation section. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
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