Center for Marketing and Supply Chain Management, Nyenrode Bus...

During the decision-making process consumers notice inspect and visually scan different products External characteristics of a product such as design packaging label and logo have been shown to strongly influence how customers perceive assess and select a product Marketers have put a lot of effort into determining the factors that trigger consumers visual attention toward products using traditional research methods self-reports or observations The use of neuroscientific tools to study consumer behavior may improve our understanding of how external characteristics influence consumers visual attention Consumer neuroscience research shows that preferences for a product may already be reflected in brain activity before customers make a final decision Using electroencephalography EEG we investigated whether the design of different wine labeling influences individual preferences reflected in the neural activity related to visual attention More specifically we examined whether the posterior contralateral negativity PCN can be used to assess and predict consumers preferences for a specific product based on its external characteristics The PCN is commonly used to estimate attentional selection by focusing on stimulus-side dependent EEG lateralization above parieto-occipital areas We computed the PCN to assess whether a certain wine label caught participants visual attention and additionally by comparing the PCN with behavioral data wine preferences and reaction times to determine whether early effects of visual attention could predict participants final preferences for a specific label Our findings indicate that the PCN provides relevant information on visual attention mechanisms for external characteristics as the view of the four labels modulated PCN amplitude We hope this study can help researchers and practitioners in examining the effects of external product characteristics on consumer choice by estimating the changes in the EEG that are related to visual attention

Center for Marketing and Supply Chain Management, Nyenrode Business University, Breukelen

About this institution

Publications Show all

Consumer Neuroscience: Attentional Preferences for Wine Labeling Reflected in the Posterior Contralateral Negativity