Why use brain imaging for marketing?

Marketers are excited about brain imaging for two main reasons. First, marketers hope that neuroimaging will provide a more efficient trade-off between costs and benefits. This hope is based on the assumptions that people cannot fully articulate their preferences when asked to express them explicitly, and that consumers’ brains contain hidden information about their true preferences. Such hidden information could, in theory, be used to influence their buying behaviour, so that the cost of performing neuroimaging studies would be outweighed by the benefit of improved product design and increased sales. In theory, at least, brain imaging could illuminate not only what people like, but also what they will buy.