Predicting Advertising success beyond Traditional Measures: New Insights from Neurophysiological Methods and Market Response Modeling

Abstract

In the past decade, there has been a tremendous increase in the use of neurophysiological methods to better understand marketing phenomena among academics and practitioners. However, the value of these methods in predicting advertising success remains underresearched. Using a unique experimental protocol to assess responses to 30-second television ads, the authors capture many measures of advertising effectiveness across six commonly used methods (traditional self-reports, implicit measures, eye tracking, biometrics, electroencephalography, and functional magnetic resonance imaging). These measures have been shown to reliably tap into higher-level constructs commonly used in advertising research: attention, affect, memory, and desirability. Using time-series data on sales and gross rating points, the authors attempt to relate individual-level response to television ads in the lab to the ads’ aggregate, market-level elasticities. The authors show that functional magnetic resonance imaging measures explain the most variance in advertising elasticities beyond the baseline traditional measures. Notably, activity in the ventral striatum is the strongest predictor of real-world, market-level response to advertising. The authors discuss the findings and their significant implications for theory, research, and practice.

Subconscious responses to fear-appeal health warnings: An exploratory study of cigarette packaging

“…Electrical activity is the result of the activity of the eccrine (sweat) glands in the human skin, and is regulated by the sympathetic nervous system (Bridger 2015), a part of the autonomic nervous system that regulates the human body's 'fight or flight' response. Because it is regulated by the autonomic nervous system, a person does not have control over the response (skin conductance), which is a 'direct measure of arousal when watching an ad' (Venkatraman et al 2015). These electrodermal responses (as the glands dilate) are thus unbiased indications of activation or arousal in response to stimuli (Labarbera & Tucciarone 1995) or -in the current study's case -to advertising material.…”

An assessment of consumers’ subconscious responses to frontline employees’ attractiveness in a service failure and recovery situation

“…Changes in electrical activity are the result of physiochemical changes and are, therefore, an indication of emotional arousal. Because humans have no control over their autonomic nervous systems, these electrodermal responses (as the glands dilate) are indications of activation or arousal in response to stimuli that human beings cannot control (Venkatraman et al 2015).…”

Introduction to the Journal of Marketing Research Special Issue on Neuroscience and Marketing

“…Finally, the article by Venkatraman et al (2015) directly compares the efficacy of six behavioral and neurophysiological methods in assessing consumers' responses to 30second television ads. The methods they compare span a wide range: traditional self-reports, an implicit association test, eye tracking, biometrics, EEG, and fMRI.…”

“…Venkatraman et al 2015), so that the strengths of one method can offset the weaknesses of other methods. This variety is important to note, because although functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is the most "glamorous" method (it "looks great on camera"), it is also the most expensive in marginal cost and has slow temporal resolution (which is poorly suited to studying rapid subsecond "fast and slow" processes).…”