Does biometrics improve marketing research? A new product brain imaging and behavioural assessment.

Given that only a small share of products survives one year after market entry, the study aims to identify a protocol to estimates the probability a successful product lunch. The marketing mistakes and the waste of resources are a natural consequence of the inability to understand ex ante what consumers want, just by asking them. Purchasers often do not know what they want or provide cognitive responses different from emotional ones, that subsequently will determine their behaviour. To overcome these difficulties and enhance the knowledge on buying decision making process, researchers have developed methodologies that record the physical impact of certain stimuli. The basic idea is that the body cannot lie and, consequently, the biometric measures can enrich the tools traditionally used to predict consumer behaviour. The aim of the present study is to compare the output of market research which companies carry out to decide the launch of a new product with the results obtained using biometric tools. More precisely, the research is conducted by means of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and the administration of a questionnaire to a sample of 66 subjects. The hypothesis that physiological responses of subjects exposed to innovation are more reliable than cognitive ones obtained through conventional methods is supported by the results. However, the new investigative techniques do not replace the older ones, but complement them.