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A Guideline for Ethical Aspects in Conducting Neuromarketing Studies

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Ethics and Neuromarketing

Abstract

The application of neuroscience in the field of marketing is attracting companies with the prospect of an extensive understanding of consumer behavior. Recent technological developments in hard- and software solutions to measure brain and body reactions have led to promising opportunities for practitioners and academics in the field of marketing. Besides the developments’ potential advantages, the commercial perspective of neuromarketing raises several ethical questions. Marketing practitioners need to be aware of the ethical aspects that the different tools, like eye tracking, EEG, and fMRI, imply when they conduct a neuromarketing study. Since recent guidelines deliver rather general instructions and are limited in their tool-specific perspective, the development of a comprehensive guideline for conducting ethically correct neuromarketing is imperative. In past years some codes have emerged, but to date no substantial ethical framework meeting academic and business standards as well as questions related to different tools has been developed. The aim of this chapter is to shed light on existing ethical guidelines with respect to tool-based distinctions in order to provide reliable answers for both academics and marketing practitioners.

The original version of this chapter was revised. An erratum to this chapter can be found at DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45609-6_13.

An erratum to this chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45609-6_13

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this experiment, a group of people drank Pepsi or Coke while their brains were scanned through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (Olteanu 2015). The study was named “Cola Brains” (McClure et al. 2004; Pispers and Dabrowski 2011; Pop and Iorga 2012).

  2. 2.

    See more details at www.apple.com/watch/health-and-fitness.

  3. 3.

    See www.carunda24.com.

  4. 4.

    This product, developed by Google, has been discontinued.

  5. 5.

    Marci is Innerscope’s M.D., CEO, co-founder, and Chief Science Officer, as well as the former Director of Social Neuroscience at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Claudia Fantapié Altobelli for many good hints and her helpful comments and support on previous drafts of this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg, Germany

    David Hensel & Judith Znanewitz

  2. Hamburg Media School, Hamburg, Germany

    Lisa-Charlotte Wolter

Authors
  1. David Hensel
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  2. Lisa-Charlotte Wolter
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  3. Judith Znanewitz
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lisa-Charlotte Wolter .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Akron, Broadview Heights, Ohio, USA

    Andrew R. Thomas

  2. Faculty of Marketing, The Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania

    Nicolae Alexandru Pop

  3. Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania

    Ana Maria Iorga

  4. Centre for Advanced Research in Management and Applied Ethics, Bucharest, Romania

    Cristian Ducu

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Hensel, D., Wolter, LC., Znanewitz, J. (2017). A Guideline for Ethical Aspects in Conducting Neuromarketing Studies. In: Thomas, A., Pop, N., Iorga, A., Ducu, C. (eds) Ethics and Neuromarketing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45609-6_4

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