Neuromarketing For Dummies

Chapter 9

Brands on the Brain

In This Chapter

Understanding how connections in the brain build strong brands

Seeing how successful brands influence us

Discovering how strong brands create lasting market impact

Identifying ways to test and build stronger brands

One of the most elusive concepts in the field of marketing and advertising is the notion of a brand. Ask consumers to describe what a brand means to them, and you’ll get a wide range of responses. Traditional market research must make a leap from those stated responses to predicting the outcomes of interest to marketers, such as how brands impact product impressions, choices, and ultimately, purchasing behavior. Because much of the impact of brands on consumer choice and behavior is nonconscious, this exercise in interpreting the tea leaves of consumers’ articulated utterances can easily go astray — too often, consumers simply don’t act the way they say they’re going to act.

In this chapter, we show how brands are represented in the brain, and how those representations can be reinforced or changed by marketing. We begin with ...