1 2 Consumer neuroscience: Assessing the brain response to marketing stimuli 3 using electroencephalogram (EEG) and eye tracking 4 Rami N. Khushaba a,⇑ Q1 , Chelsea Wise b , Sarath Kodagoda a , Jordan Louviere b , Barbara E. Kahn c , 5 Claudia Townsend d 6 a Center for Intelligent Mechatronics Systems, Faculty of Engineering and IT, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia 7 b Centre for the Study of Choice, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia 8 c Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, United States 9 d School of Business Administration, University of Miami, United States 10 11 13 article info 14 15 Keywords: 16 Choice modeling 17 Electroencephalogram (EEG) 18 Neuromarketing 19 20 abstract 21 Application of neuroscience methods to analyze and understand human behavior related to markets and 22 marketing exchange has recently gained research attention. The basic aim is to guide design and presen- 23 tation of products to optimize them to be as compatible as possible with consumer preferences. This 24 paper investigates physiological decision processes while participants undertook a choice task designed 25 to elicit preferences for a product. The task required participants to choose their preferred crackers 26 described by shape (square, triangle, round), flavor (wheat, dark rye, plain) and topping (salt, poppy, 27 no topping). The two main research objectives were (1) to observe and evaluate the cortical activity of 28 the different brain regions and the interdependencies among the Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals 29 from these regions; and (2) unlike most research in this area that has focused mainly on liking/disliking 30 certain products, we provide a way to quantify the importance of different cracker features that contrib- 31 ute to the product design based on mutual information. We used the commercial Emotiv EPOC wireless 32 EEG headset with 14 channels to collect EEG signals from participants. We also used a Tobii-Studio eye 33 tracker system to relate the EEG data to the specific choice options (crackers). Subjects were shown 57 34 choice sets; each choice set described three choice options (crackers). The patterns of cortical activity 35 were obtained in the five Q3 principal frequency bands, Delta (0–4 Hz), Theta (3–7 Hz), Alpha (8–12 Hz), Beta 36 (13–30 Hz), and Gamma (30–40 Hz). There was a clear phase synchronization between the left and right 37 frontal and occipital regions indicating interhemispheric communications during the chosen task for the 38 18 participants. Results also indicated that there was a clear and significant change (p < 0.01) in the EEG 39 power spectral activities taking a place mainly in the frontal (delta, alpha and beta across F3, F4, FC5 and 40 FC6), temporal (alpha, beta, gamma across T7), and occipital (theta, alpha, and beta across O1) regions 41 when participants indicated their preferences for their preferred crackers. Additionally, our mutual infor- 42 mation analysis indicated that the various cracker flavors and toppings of the crackers were more impor- 43 tant factors affecting the buying decision than the shapes of the crackers. 44 Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 45 46 47 1. Introduction 48 Consumer neuroscience is an emerging interdisciplinary field 49 that combines psychology, neuroscience, and economics to study 50 how the brain is physiologically affected by advertising and mar- 51 keting strategies (Lee, Broderick, & Chamberlain, 2007; Madan, 52 2010). It links consumer choices and decision-making to marketing 53 research (Camerer, Loewenstein, & Prelec, 2004; Pirouz, 2007; 54 Plassmann, Ramsoy, & Milosavljevic, 2012) Q4 . The general assump- 55 tion is that human brain activity can provide marketers with infor- 56 mation not obtainable via conventional marketing research 57 methods (e.g., interviews, questionnaires, focus groups) (Ariely & 58 Berns, 2010). This is mainly driven by the fact that people cannot 59 (or do not want to) fully explain their preferences when explicitly 60 asked; as human behavior can be (and is) driven by processes oper- 61 ating below the level of conscious awareness (Calvert & Brammer, 62 2012). In such cases, the effectiveness of the different marketing 63 strategies may be evaluated by monitoring brain activity resulting 64 from consumers observing different advertisements and products 65 (Astolfi et al., 2009; Ohme, Reykowska, Wiener, & Choromanska, 66 2009). The change in the human brain signal, denoted as Electroen- 67 cephalogram (EEG), and its main spectral bands of Delta (0–4 Hz), 0957-4174/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2012.12.095 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 404305764; fax: +61 295142655. Q2 E-mail addresses: Rami.Khushaba@uts.edu.au (R.N. Khushaba), Chelsea. Wise@uts.edu.au (C. Wise), Sarath.Kodagoda@uts.edu.au (S. Kodagoda), Jordan. Louviere@uts.edu.au (J. Louviere), kahn@wharton.upenn.edu (B.E. Kahn), ctownsend@bus.miami.edu (C. Townsend). Expert Systems with Applications xxx (2013) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Expert Systems with Applications journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa ESWA 8345 No. of Pages 10, Model 5G 9 January 2013 Please cite this article in press as: Khushaba, R. N., et al. Consumer neuroscience: Assessing the brain response to marketing stimuli using electroenceph- alogram (EEG) and eye tracking. Expert Systems with Applications (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2012.12.095