How Cool Is That?

Here's another chance for you to get a little freaked out by the emerging science of neuromarketing: PBS is presenting Marketing To Your Mind, a show in which good spirit Alan Alda's mind is scanned with magnetic imaging as he is presented with cool (iPod) vs. non-cool (Buicks) to look at while we get to see activity in his frontal lobe.

That part of the brain is used to reflect on yourself and how you might be viewed by others — and it often lights up when subjects imagine themselves using the particular product on display. "I think that's an interesting result," Asp says. "You don't just buy a product for its own sake, isolated from the rest of your world. It's actually a very social act and we're showing the world who we are by buying these products." Consumers take a lot more into account when they decide to buy products than dry economic theories of utility and cost might suggest.

You mean people don't always tell the truth about what motivates them to buy stuff?! Say it ain't so!

Comments

[jennifer rice]

just wrote a post on this here, but i don't think my trackback pings are working...
http://www.corante.com/brandshift/archives/2005/03/03/hindsight_research.php