It seems perfectly reasonable that marketers are strapping on information-gathering, brain-monitoring gear on consumers to see if their products and services have massive appeal.
Research like greed, a la Gordon Gekko, is good.
A recent Forbes article, worthy of reading, discusses a study using 15 men and 15 women to gauge their reaction to a 2011 Hyundai vehicle. Rather than employ the questionnaire format, which has been done to death, electrode-equipped caps are placed on the subjects’ heads as they inspect various parts of the car. Why would you do that?
Dean Macko, manager of brand strategy at Hyundai Motor America gets to the point: "We want to know what consumers think about a car before we start manufacturing thousands of them."
If neuromarketing (that's what it's being called) is good enough for Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! what's stopping everyone else? Probably the cost. Well, I've known companies that have spent way more than 50 Gs on market research studies and come away with nothing more than a fancy report and some advertising slogans. Why not plunk the cash down on an EEG device and tap the brains of 30 consumers?
Okay, so you need to think it over, do some more research and read up a bit. Start with Martin Lindstrom's Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy.
Tapping the Consumer's Brain
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