The neuroscience of consumer choice

Highlights

• Consumer neuroscience studies questions of both a scientific and commercial nature.

• Studies of scientific nature have focused on neurobiology of choice processes.

• Further advances require incorporating developmental, attentional, and memory processes.

• Commercial interests in consumer neuroscience have been increasing in recent years.

• Growing evidence of value of neuroscientific techniques in market-level predictions.

We review progress and challenges relating to scientific and applied goals of the nascent field of consumer neuroscience. Scientifically, substantial progress has been made in understanding the neurobiology of choice processes. Further advances, however, require researchers to begin clarifying the set of developmental and cognitive processes that shape and constrain choices. First, despite the centrality of preferences in theories of consumer choice, we still know little about where preferences come from and the underlying developmental processes. Second, the role of attention and memory processes in consumer choice remains poorly understood, despite importance ascribed to them in interpreting data from the field. The applied goal of consumer neuroscience concerns our ability to translate this understanding to augment prediction at the population level. Although the use of neuroscientific data for market-level predictions remains speculative, there is growing evidence of superiority in specific cases over existing market research techniques.

Introduction

At the heart of all commercial and economic activities is the consumer, whose preferences and choices heavily influence a host of decisions and actions by entrepreneurs, firms, and governments [1]. These choices range from weighty ones such as purchasing a home to routine ones such as grocery shopping. Scientifically, theories of consumer choice are foundational to a number of fields in the social and biological sciences 1, 2, 3]. In applied settings, governments and companies expend considerable sums to forecast individual-level and aggregate choices and to shape preferences [4].

In recent years, researchers working in different fields, including psychology, economics, neuroscience, and marketing, have sought to systematically examine neurobiological mechanisms underlying consumer preferences and choice processes. These findings have been reviewed in a number of journals from both neuroscience and consumer research perspectives 4•, 5, 6, 7, 8], including how pricing, branding, and advertising affect consumer choice, as well as attempts of both academic and industrial researchers in translating this neural understanding to improving accuracy of market-level forecasting based on existing techniques.

Therefore, rather focusing on past findings, we will discuss some important open questions that are only beginning to be addressed in the literature. Using an ordinary grocery-shopping trip as a motivating example, we consider two sets of questions at the intersection of consumer research and cognitive neuroscience. First, how are consumer preferences formed and represented in the brain? In particular, how do we characterize the complex interaction and contribution of social, cultural, and developmental processes to preference formation? Although we know much about the developmental trajectory of consumer preference formation on the one hand, and those of neurocognitive processes on the other, there is as of yet little attempt to understand how the latter serves to shape and constrain the former.

Second, what are the roles of attention and memory processes in translating preferences to choice behavior, particularly in naturalistic settings (Figure 1)? For example, how do consumers and their brains respond to complex communications and marketing stimuli in modern societies (e.g., ads, websites, packaging), and how do they engage in specific tasks (e.g., search, choice, usage)? Here too, despite ample documentation of the importance of consumer attention and memory in real-world behavior, we know little about the underlying neurocognitive processes involved. Finally, we then turn our attention to issues surrounding the commercial application of the neural-level knowledge to forecast aggregate consumer behavior at the market level, including questions related to its feasibility and impact.