MBA 615/2/A

Management Information System

Report on

Neurobusiness
An Emerging Technology
Submitted on
October 06, 2015

By
Jian Song

ID: 27587910

Mohammad Mohiuddin

ID: 25470560

DhandapanyKartik Narayanan

ID: 27859430

Overview of Neurobusiness
Neurobusiness is defined as the capability of applying neuroscience insights to improve
business decisions(Gartner). Gartner associates this trend to digital marketing, with
companies in the information age keen to find more ways to understand consumers and
influence their purchasing decisions.
There are four main disciplines of neurobusiness: neuromarketinge, neurofinance,
neuroleadership and neuromanagement (Ghadiri, Habermacher, & Peters, 2012), and
many others are developing.
Of all the major streams of neurobusiness, Neuromarketing is relatively the most evolved
and applied stream in business today. Other disciplines of neurobusiness are still in their
nascent stage and do not have practical relevance as of now (Saad, et al., 2008).
How it works
By taking advantage of a range of neuroscience technologies, which in turn uses braincomputer interface technologies such as Electroencephalogram, Functional magnetic
Resonance Imaging, marketing specialists analyze how the brain responds when an
individual interacts with certain products, services or advertisements. It helps companies
to gather information of the unconscious mind of customers, which is not possible
through interviews, surveys and other traditional methods. Management decisions are
then based on these information and the patterns deduced from them.
Reaction of Companies to Neurobusiness
In order to realize neurobusiness studies and its practical implementation in business,
some specialized agencies were established: Neuroco and Neurosense (UK),
BrightHouse, Neurostrategies and NeuroInsights (USA), PHD Media (Canada),
SalesBrain (France), Neuro Insight (Australia) and a lot more (Touhami, et al., 2011).
Due to high failure rate of traditional marketing techniques, which heavily relies on the
information from the conscious mind of consumers, many big companies, are treading
into this emerging technology and engaging neuroscience agencies to come up with more
appropriate marketing campaigns based on their experiments. On the other hand, midsized or smaller organizations are not yet using this technology due to the high costs of
experiments involved, which may not be viable to them.

Examples of Early Adopters

Many IT, Automobile, Food & Beverage and FMCG companies are adopting to these
technologies for various products. Few of the early adopters of Neurobusiness and the
area of their application are given in the below table.
Application of Neuromarketing Techniques by Companies
Company
Application
Procter & Gamble
Motorola
Hyundai
Frito Lay (PepsiCo)
Microsoft

Google

Weather Channel

In launching of Febreze, room freshener

Product-designing
In changing exterior appearance of the car
To test commercials, products and packages as well as to
learn how to appeal better to women
To know engagement of Xbox users while playing the
game, including their feelings of surprise, satisfaction and
frustration
To measure effectiveness of YouTube overlays versus
pre-rolls and found that overlays were much more
effective with subjects
To measure viewer reactions in three different
promotional pitches for a popular series

Industry
FMCG
Mobile
Automobile
Food
IT/ITES

IT/ITES
Television

Source:(Babu &Vidyasagar, 2012)

Advantages & Disadvantages of Neurobusiness

The most significant advantage is that it can get the unconscious information, which is
more true compared with the conscious one and help in putting up more effective ad
campaigns. It can lead to a win-win situation for buyer as well as the consumer. It
basically succeeds where the traditional marketing strategies fails.
One of the major threats of advancement of this is its possible unethical usage. Marketing
firms can smartly promote dangerous products by manipulating human mind. Another
disadvantage is the small sample sizes of the experiments which may not be completely
reliable. It is also susceptible to Hawthorne Effect and Observer-expectancy effect.
Conclusion
The emergence of Neurobusiness has surely given more powers to the producers make
better corporate decisions and design their strategies based on the higher quality
information. With correct amount of investments in research and increased openness of
companies to adopt new technologies, it may slowly phase out the traditional marketing
techniques pertaining to higher reliability. In short, Neurobusiness is a truly emerging
technology.

Reference
Babu, S. S., &Vidyasagar, T. P. (2012). Neuromarketing: Is Campbell in Soup?
Gartner. (n.d.). Neurobusiness. Retrieved from http://www.gartner.com/itglossary/neurobusiness
Ghadiri, A., Habermacher, A., & Peters, T. (2012). Neuroleadership-A Journey Through
the Brain for Business Leaders. Springer.
McClure, S. M., Li, J., Tomlin, D., Cypert, K. S., Montague, L. M., & Montague, P. R.
(2004, October 14). Neural Correlates of Behavioral Preference. Neuron, pp. 379
387.
Ruskin, G. (2004, July 12). Commercial Alert Asks Senate Commerce Committee to
Investigate Neuromarketing. Retrieved from Commercial Alert:
http://www.commercialalert.org/issues/culture/neuromarketing/commercial-alertasks-senate-commerce-committee-to-investigate-neuromarketing
Saad, G., Stanton, A. A., Lee, N., Senior, C., Butler, M. J., & Garcia, J. R. (2008).
Evolutionary NeuroBusiness. NeuroPsychoEconomics Conference.
Touhami, Z. O., Benlafkih, L., Jiddane, M., Cherrah, Y., Malki, H. O., &Benomar, A.
(2011, March 4). Neuromarketing: Where marketing and neuroscience meet.
African Journal of Business Management, pp. 1528-1532.