Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World

CHAPTER 14Using Neuroscience to Assess Brands

Moran Cerf

Brands live in the minds of consumers. A brand is the set of associations that come to mind when a particular name or logo is encountered. Traditionally, managers have relied heavily on research techniques, such as focus groups and surveys, that ask consumers to report these associations. Unfortunately, such self-reports often prove to be poor predictors of key metrics of brand success, such as market share and sales volume. Often, consumers claim to love and recognize brands, and have a strong positive set of associations with them, but they do not behave in a manner that reflects such a positive disposition. As a result, managers of a number of major brands are exploring methods for accessing the brain activity and other physiological responses that drives consumers’ behavior and decisions in an effort to improve their predictions of behaviors toward brands.

Emerging evidence suggests that neuroscience methods may augment more traditional marketing research techniques in predicting consumer behavior. For example, in 2015 a team of marketing researchers joined with the Advertising Research Foundation to test 37 television ads for 16 unique brands.¹ The goal was to assess the degree to which variation in ad elasticity (the percentage change in sales associated with a 1 percent change in advertising spending) could be accounted for by measures beyond traditional self-reports. Data was collected using a variety of contemporary ...