Neuromarketing Research

EEG

Actionable Insights

EEG in Neuromarketing Research

Electroencephalography (EEG) is a fundamental brain imaging technique in neuromarketing.

EEG offers a nonintrusive, comfortable and affordable method to record brain activity, making it the golden standard when researching how the brain responds to advertising, packaging and store environments.

How does EEG work?

During an EEG, electrodes are applied to the scalp. The EEG registers electrical neural activity in the form of brain waves. It outputs Hz frequencies for each cortical area. EEG measures neuronal, electrical activity directly, providing a remarkable temporal accuracy up to the millisecond.

During an EEG, research participants hardly notice the device on their heads. This makes it a highly regarded neuroimaging technique in neuromarketing, as flexibility and naturalistic research settings are preferred.

Like any research method, EEG does have its downsides. It measures electrical activity through the surface of the scalp, making it unable to register activity within deeper brain structures. Secondly, EEG data is relatively noisy. In order to get reliable insights, EEG requires sophisticated data analyses and substantial sample sizes (20+).

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How can EEG be used in neuromarketing research?

In neuromarketing, we often want to find out the consumer’s true emotional response towards ads, products or (online) stores. EEG is a useful tool in exploring that question.

Research from the past decades has deciphered how human drives and feelings relate to specific patterns in the brain. Brain wave activity reveals the degree of excitement, frustration and approach motivation, which are of predictive value for actual real-world sales. For instance, left pre-frontal asymmetry signals a drive to approach and has been found to predict the likelihood of buying.

In neuromarketing, it’s especially valuable to pair EEG with eye tracking. EEG gives emotional meaning to what Eye Tracking registers. This yields priceless insights into the evoked thoughts and feelings of each specific message element. In addition, we often utilize measures such as pupil size and galvanic skin response, indicative of intensity, to further enrich the EEG findings.

Solutions Overview

Unravel Research applies neuromarketing in three fundamental branches of marketing: advertising, product packaging and online usability.

For each area, our experience guides in asking the right questions. Only then do we uncover actionable insights that truly help you make better marketing decisions.