South African marketing researchers’ perceptions of neuromarketing and its utilisation in a marketing research context

Abstract

Our decision-making and behaviour as consumers are largely influenced by unconscious and subconscious mental processes. The willingness to act upon our desire to purchase products or services is inherently linked to various underlying neurocognitive and emotional factors driving our preferences and actions. At its core, neuromarketing is considered a field of research that scientifically investigates intrinsic consumer decision-making by employing a variety of neurophysiological techniques and theories. However, despite the potential of neuromarketing techniques to provide unique insights into consumer behaviour, its adoption by South African marketing research firms remains limited, resulting in a lack of extensive literature on the application of neuromarketing within South Africa. Thus, the purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the perceptions of South African marketing researchers about neuromarketing and its utilisation within a South African marketing research context. Employing an experiential research design, the researcher sought to understand how neuromarketing is perceived and applied by industry professionals in South Africa. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 marketing researchers with experience working with or managing neuromarketing projects at South African marketing research firms. The transcripts were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis with four themes and 12 subthemes identified from the interview data. Overall, the findings revealed key insights concerning the potential and challenges of incorporating neuroscientific techniques and theories within an industry reliant on traditional marketing research methods. Regardless of the implications associated with integrating neuroscientific techniques in a developing country, most participants expressed positive perceptions about neuromarketing. This pertained to the potential of neuromarketing to serve as a complementary approach to traditional marketing research methods, offering a more comprehensive understanding of consumer behaviour. Consequently, this study contributed to the existing body of literature on the application of neuromarketing in developing countries and addressed the gap in understanding both current and future applications of neuromarketing in South Africa.