What is neuromarketing? Definition, examples and techniques

In short: neuromarketing uses brain and body measurements, such as EEG, fMRI, eye tracking and skin response, to see how people react to ads and prices without relying only on what they say. The best-known studies point the same way: what people tell you about an ad is a weak predictor of what they do. For most teams, that lesson is more useful than a brain scanner.

What is neuromarketing?

Neuromarketing is the use of neuroscience methods to study how people respond to marketing. Researchers measure brain activity, eye movements, heart rate or skin conductance while someone watches an ad, tastes a product or sees a price. Academics usually call the field consumer neuroscience. Neuromarketing, or neuroscience marketing, is the term for the commercial use of it. Most of what the field knows comes from consumer psychology research done in labs, and a few of those studies changed how marketers think about brands and prices.

The field has Dutch roots. Ale Smidts of Erasmus University Rotterdam gave one of the first academic definitions of neuromarketing in 2002, together with an account of what it could and could not do (ERIM).

The reason it exists is simple. Surveys and focus groups ask people to explain their choices. People are bad at that. They give the answer that sounds reasonable or the one they think you want to hear. Neuromarketing tries to measure the reaction before it turns into an explanation.

Four neuromarketing studies show that what people say and do drift apart

The Coke and Pepsi test (2004)

Researchers led by Read Montague scanned 67 people while they drank Coca-Cola and Pepsi. In the blind test, both drinks activated the brain's reward system and preferences were split. Once people knew which brand they were drinking, other brain regions became active, linked to memory and brand associations, and three out of four preferred Coca-Cola (New York Times, 2004). The drink stayed the same. The brand changed the experience.

The wine that tasted better because it cost more (2008)

Hilke Plassmann and colleagues gave 20 people three wines, presented as five with different prices. A $5 wine also appeared as a $45 wine, and a $90 wine also appeared as a $10 wine. People rated the same wine as more pleasant when it carried a higher price, and the brain region linked to experienced pleasantness, the medial orbitofrontal cortex, was more active as well (PNAS, 2008, via Medical News Today). The price label changed how the wine was experienced.

Brain activity before a purchase (2007)

Brian Knutson and colleagues asked people to choose whether to buy products while they lay in an fMRI scanner. Activity in the nucleus accumbens rose with product preference. Activity in the insula rose when the price felt too high. Together, these signals predicted the purchase decision that followed, beyond what people reported themselves (Stanford).

The anti-smoking ad the experts disliked (2012)

Emily Falk, Elliot Berkman and Matthew Lieberman showed three anti-smoking campaigns to 31 smokers who wanted to quit. The participants and a panel of experts both ranked campaign C last. Brain activity in the medial prefrontal cortex ranked it first. When the campaigns ran, campaign C generated the most calls to the national quitline (University of Michigan). The self-reported ranking was the reverse of what happened.

Neuromarketing techniques and tools: what each one measures

Source: overview by Bitbrain.

The choice depends on the question. Eye tracking tells you whether people saw your price or your logo. EEG and skin response tell you when attention or arousal peaks during a video. fMRI is mostly for academic research because of the cost.

Neuromarketing has real limits

The studies above are strong examples. The method still has weaknesses you should know before you buy a study.

• Reverse inference. A brain region that lights up does not tell you which thought or feeling caused it, because most regions do several things. Concluding "the insula was active, so people felt pain at the price" is a leap. It becomes less of a problem when the goal is predicting behaviour rather than explaining it (Cao & Reimann, Frontiers in Psychology, 2020).
• Small samples. Many studies use 20 to 70 people. Small samples combined with many tests produce false positives (Cao & Reimann, 2020).
• Lab versus real life. Lying in a scanner or wearing a sensor cap is not how people scroll past your ad on the train.
• Cost. fMRI is very expensive and lab-bound; EEG and eye tracking are cheaper but still need participants, equipment and analysis (Bitbrain). A test on your own traffic uses the customers you already have.

Neuromarketing ethics: where the line is

Neuromarketing measures reactions people are not fully aware of, so the ethical question comes up quickly. Two rules help.

First, consent. Anyone you measure should know what you collect and what happens with the data.

Second, the law sets boundaries for AI-driven persuasion. Since 2 February 2025, the EU AI Act bans AI systems that use subliminal techniques or purposefully manipulative or deceptive techniques that materially distort behaviour. The European Commission's guidelines say personalised advertising is not manipulative in itself, as long as it avoids those techniques. The ban on emotion recognition applies to workplaces and education, not to consumers (Covington, 2025). Check with your legal or privacy team before you collect biometric or brain data.

The practical test: would your customer be fine with it if you explained exactly what you did? If not, don't do it.

You don't need a brain scanner to use the lesson

The Falk study is the one to remember. Experts and the target audience both picked the wrong ad. Asking people what works turned out to be a weak way to find out what works.

Most marketing teams can act on that without a lab:

• Test behaviour, not opinions. Put two versions live and measure sign-ups or sales instead of asking which one people prefer. Our marketing experiment examples and the guide to A/B testing for marketing show how to set that up.
• Look at what people do on your site. Heatmaps, scroll depth and session recordings are a cheap cousin of eye tracking. They show whether people reach your offer at all. More in customer behavior analysis.
• Test prices and framing too. The wine study shows that price changes the experience of the product. Offer and price tests often move more than a new visual. See landing page optimization for where to start.
• Use neuromarketing research for big, expensive bets. A TV campaign or a packaging redesign can justify an EEG or eye-tracking study before launch. A weekly social ad cannot.

At Sprints & Sneakers we run this logic in monthly sprints: a hypothesis, a test on real traffic, a measured result, and the next decision based on that result. That is how we work on B2B and B2C growth marketing.