Neuromarketing For Dummies

Chapter 23

Ten Mistaken Beliefs about Neuromarketing

In This Chapter

Separating fact from fiction about neuromarketing

Putting neuromarketing news and opinions in context

Avoiding the hype about neuromarketing

Add brain science to market research, and the public will accept it with open arms. That’s what neuromarketers assumed when the field first emerged. Some early pioneers overhyped the capabilities of neuromarketing and created more than a little backlash among traditional research vendors, scientists, and journalists. Some of that criticism was justified — but some was based on faulty assumptions that can still be heard in many discussions of neuromarketing, pro and con. We address ten of those faulty assumptions here.

Your Brain Has a “Buy Button”

You can probably recall more than one movie in which an evil villain takes over a person’s mind and makes him do things he wouldn’t ordinarily do. In the movies, it’s usually a “kill button” that the bad guy presses, but in discussions of neuromarketing, it’s the “buy button” that people are worried about. How real is this concern? Can it really happen, or is it just a good Hollywood plot device?

This concern has been expressed ...