Consumer’s Brain and Marketing Placebo Effects
Consumer’s Brain Behaviour: Which ones are more responsive to marketing placebo effects?
The placebo effect can be described as simple as: give a group of patients a sugar pill instead of medication, and some will show an improvement in their symptoms. The placebo effect is related to the brain’s reward system, and marketing is trying to achieve a non-medical placebo effect in the minds of consumers.
Studies have shown that some marketing actions can generate added satisfaction in a placebo-like manner. For example, one such belief is that lower-priced goods are of lower quality. Therefore, prices can be a reference that signals quality and thus generate an expectation about how good a product is.
In addition, some studies have investigated whether other marketing-based expectations change, in the brain, other positive emotional experiences, such as taste, flavor and aesthetic pleasures. They found that marketing actions, expectancy manipulations are associated with changes in neural activity linked to consumption.
Marketing Placebo Effects: Consumer’s expectations truly influence neurobiological responses to the experience of different stimulation.
Brain Moderators of Marketing Placebo Effects (MPEs) During Food Consumption
Consumers can react equally when they are exposed to same products, with different prices, or different products with the same price. That’s one effect of MPE. The other is healthfulness claims, like “light”, “sugar free” or “0% fat”. The first study that was developed showed that individual differences in MPEs are linked to reward processing, showed by differences in gray matter volume -major component of the central nervous system- in striatum, somatosensory awareness, as well as differences in the posterior insula, with cognitive appraisal of emotional experiences as signified by differences in gray matter volume.
Individual Differences in Reward Seeking, Somatosensory Awareness, and Cognitive Focus for the effects of price during wine tasting
Price tag can influence a choice of a product. But why? Studies showed that consumer responsiveness is positively correlated with the strength of MPEs. If the MPE that a company uses is strong enough to create an expectancy to consumer, then the consumption of the company’s products will be probably more.
Consumers that have high somatosensory awareness are less receptive to MPEs, and the higher the cognitive focus of a consumer is, the higher the strength of MPE is.These studies conclude that consumers with greater demand and need for cognitive processing were more sensitive to Marketing Placebo Effects.
Individual differences in reward seeking, somatosensory awareness, and cognitive focus for the effects of branding during aesthetic consumption
Although there are effects on experience of consumption, in what regards health or pricing thus effects are not concrete. More research and studies are necessary to support conclusions in the matter. In a comparison of an art work where one work was in fact produced by an artist in opposed to a work made using a computer, we can conclude that consumers preferred the works of the artist. They conclude that in reward seeking, somatosensory awareness and cognitive processing, the effects on consumption became moderate.
Consumers are not born with a specific Marketing Placebo Effect
Marketing influences consumer behaviour and impact their purchase decisions. The responses acquired are not only influenced by genetic predispositions but are mostly caused by environmental effects such as training and learning.The differences in MPEs must be considered when referring to marketing actions.
This calls for future studies that manipulate the reward processing, cognitive, and somatic focus rather than measure individual differences related to such processes as a personality trait variable. It would be important to consider the manipulation of neuropharmacological process related to well-being. Our brain produces several neurotransmitters responsible for each reaction, behaviour, we have to different stimulations, in this way and supported on the believe that obese patients have dopamine deficiencies can we assume that they are more influenced to healthfulness claims used on packaging?
It is not yet possible to estimate accurately patterns of brain activity neither can predict Marketing Placebo Effects.
This article was written by Ana Rita Serra, Ana Margarida César, and Margarida Lopes based on “ Individual Differences in Marketing Placebo Effects: Evidence from Brain Imaging and Behavioral Experiments”
