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Content uploaded by Hassan Azdimousa
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All content in this area was uploaded by Hassan Azdimousa on May 14, 2020
Content may be subject to copyright.
Using Neuromarketing and AI to collect and analyse
consumer’s emotion: Literature review and
perspectives
Yahia Mouammine, Hassan Azdimousa
Ibn Tofail University, Kénitra, Morocco
yahia.mouammine@uit.ac.ma
hassan.azdimousa@encgk.ma
Abstract— In the actual era, the human being has decided to
go beyond his own intelligence, for a better understanding of the
world, and an easier life style, hence he created Artificial
Intelligence. Robots, smartphones, machines and softwares, that
once were a pure creation of sci-fi writers imagination over a
decade before, are becoming gradually essential to our daily life,
and the fact that the economy, especially marketing, profits from
it, is inescapable. Given that Neuromarketing, is mainly based
on technological tools, its combination with AI could certainly
improve it, to collect and measure the consumer’s emotion with
more accuracy. In this paper, we present a literature review of
Neuromarketing and AI, and the current usage of AI in
marketing studies with different technologies, and as we found
out that few academics and scientific articles take an interest on
the topic, we will be giving some perspectives and guidance
questions for future researches and experimental studies.
Keywords— Neuromarketing-artificial intelligence-
emotions-Feel Data-digitalization.
I. INTRODUCTION
Henceforth, it is inevitable not to mention artificial
intelligence (AI), regardless of the topic or the situation; it is
becoming gradually an indispensable element of our daily
lives. Moreover, its impact on the human life style is
notoriously growing, and expected to be involved in changing
the civilisations in the very near future [1], and it is likely to
change the way, marketers measure and analyse consumer’s
behaviour. Neuromarketing is known to be the application of
neuroscience tools and techniques in marketing studies, in
order to understand consumer’s behaviour, by analysing the
brain’s reaction to marketing stimuli [2], and as it’s mainly a
result of a combination between marketing and new
technologies (Eye tracking, facial recognition, etc.), AI may
make Neuromarketing more interesting from the point of
view of measurement accuracy, in fact, it has been
demonstrated that an Artificial Intelligence based system, can
be effective enough to assure the extraction and recognition
of all sort of emotions of individuals, regardless of gender
and race [3]. The role of motions is very significant in our
daily lives and communication, and in today's globalization,
intensified by the rapid and continuous improvement of the
digital and the virtual world, developing a properly
constructed marketing strategy that will have a positive
emotional influence on the public, has become very
challenging for companies [4]-[5]. AI is likely to impact the
future of marketing, and to influence the way marketers
comprehend the consumer’s behaviour; we hence also believe
that, combining AI, which is continually improved, with
Neuromarketing tools and techniques, may help marketers to
collect and measure consumer’s emotions with more accuracy
and reliability, to better understand his/her decision making
process.
II. NEUROMARKETING
Neuromarketing is the application of neuroscience
methods and knowledge in marketing and its traditional
approaches [6], and it is considered an interdisciplinary field,
combining psychology, neuroscience, and economics [7].
Patrick Georges and Michel Badoc [8], in their book Le
Neuromarketing en Action, show us that today and future
marketers, need to understand what can explain the difference
between the declarative and the purchasing behaviour, which
is often an emotional perception rather than a rational one.
The book's authors emphasize the limitations of traditional
market research methods, since these studies are based
essentially on declarative data and information; what the
questioned person states, which may be different from her
actual thinking.
From another point of view, this time from a professional,
The Neuromarketer Dr. A.K Pradeep [9] explains in his book
The Buying Brain how recent advances in brain monitoring
and measurement capabilities, digital technologies and
computational power allow scientists to delve deeply into the
functioning of the human brain. Pradeep provides insights
into brain function and progress in Neurotesting and
Neuromarketing that allow marketers to directly appeal to the
thoughts and the feelings of the consumer. His work is
recommended to product developers, designers, marketers,
and digital marketers who are looking for ideas on the
emerging field of Neuromarketing in their innovation
strategy.
Copyright 2019
ISSN 1737-9237
International Journal of Business & Economic Strategy (IJBES)
Vol. 12 pp. 34-38
However, we need to make clear the distinction between
Neuromarketing and consumer neurosciences. While the
latter refers to the intersection of neuroscience and consumer
psychology, from an academic point of view,
Neuromarketing suggests conducting market researches
specific to companies, using neurophysiological tools such as
EEG, fMRI, eye-tracking, skin conductance, etc. [10]. These
tools have been proven effective in the measurement of
consumer’s emotions, especially the difficult to express ones.
In fact, emotions are omnipresent in the marketing context;
they play a fundamental role in the information processing,
influence responses to persuasive messages, and measure the
effects of marketing stimuli [11]. Thus, emotions play a
major role in the decision-making process. Moreover, in the
current market, and given the progress in the digital world,
the consumer is stifled by the various offers that could be
found at his/her fingertip, and this situation often leads to
impulsive and irrational buying.
Marketing professionals need to make the consumer’s
emotion an integral part of their communication strategy and
product design, thereby they can hope for a significant
conversion rate, and allow the company to gain in term of
profit, of relationship with its customers, and the customer to
live a better experience and an optimal use [9].
Nevertheless, Neuromarketing methods might have some
limitations. The most relevant one is that each method could
provide a correct measure for particular emotions, and not for
others. For example, EDA (Electrodermal activity) the
measure that rely on skin conductance response, provides an
accurate measure of emotional arousal, while it is not
pertinent for directional valence [12].
We need to stress that Neuromarketing will benefit from
the continuous improvement and technological innovation,
and we think that the actual drawbacks of Neuromarketing
methods might be surpassed.
III. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be defined as the creation of
computer systems called intelligent, as they are composed of
analytical processes whose goal is to propose solutions and
algorithms that enhance our daily lives, and also learn the
human behaviour via data collection [13]. In this section we
will present the literature review of AI, the actual state of its
application in marketing studies and digital marketing, and its
potential combination with Neuromarketing for Feel Data
measurement.
A. AI and marketing
AI focuses on proposing and developing of automated
computer based solutions to problems that normally require
intelligence when done by humans [14]. In a marketing
context, there are plenty of problems and questions that
require a particular intelligence and judgments capability, in
order to assess these problems with a high guarantee of
success.
As we said before, few academics and scientific articles
have been focusing on this topic, in fact, a simple research in
Scopus using marketing and AI as keywords in related
journals, results in a surprising finding: the number of articles
and paper discussing the topic is very low, below 50 [15].
Fig. 1. Published papers (1972–2011) on artificial intelligence/intelligent
systems applied to marketing (Source: Scopus, May 2012)
Although, recent researches show that AI is a real
exploitable opportunity to empower the analytical methods
for an array of marketing issues [16]. In fact, the integration
of AI to marketing studies has allowed the achievement of
better Mass Data Analysis, a better understanding of
consumer’s behaviour, before, during and after the buying
moment, and the improvement of user experience [3]. We
believe that AI will provide marketers with the ability to
predict consumers’ expectations with more accuracy, and it
will help them to decide the pricing strategy with much less
hesitation.
B. AI and the extraction Emotional Data
Advances in new technologies have led marketers to
become closely interested in exploiting intelligent computed-
based systems, to extract and measure consumer’s emotions
when exposed to marketing stimuli, to which we refer as Feel
Data or Emotional Data. Methods as Eye-tracking, facial
expressions recognition and EEG, became ―famous‖ due to
the emergence of Neuromarketing, a multidisciplinary field
which has allowed marketers to focus their analytical efforts
on consumer’s emotion, as the latter to be considered a
fundamental element of his/her decision making process [17].
Recently, new AI based systems have been developed for the
extraction of emotions from facial expression, and they’ve
been demonstrated to be very effective [3]. Nowadays,
researchers can chose between in an array of tools, in labs or
online to conduct marketing studies, using facial expression
recognition, very effective in term of results, and efficient in
term of cost (SmartFace, Facetales, id3 technologies, etc.)
IV. AI AND NEUROMARKETING
Many academics and professionals keep their sceptical
perception of Neuromarketing, stating that it has many
limitations [18]. Nevertheless, and taking into consideration
the emergence of AI, and its combination with
Neuromarketing, some limitations may disappear, and
Neuromarketing tools and methods would be more accessible,
Copyright 2019
ISSN 1737-9237
International Journal of Business & Economic Strategy (IJBES)
Vol. 12 pp. 34-38
especially in term of usage and costs. Similarly to AI,
Neuromarketing did not arrive yet to its maturity in term of
research and theoretical frameworks, and likewise, scientific
papers discussing the integration of AI in Neuromarketing
studies are very few, but in perspective, it’s very promising.
Tools and techniques as EEG, Eye-tracking would tend to be
more accessible to conduct marketing studies.
The main focus of Neuromarketing is analysing
unconscious and implicit elements of the consumer’s
behaviour, in order to measure and principally to understand
his/her emotional reaction to marketing stimuli, with the
purpose to outdo the limitations of traditional marketing, and
to establish an accurate consumer’s judgment, bias-free [19].
Eye-tracking technology allows the recording of eye
movements to obtain insight into consumer’s cognitive
processes; it has also been proven that in some case, this
technology can record facial expressions, and emotions like
fear, anger and joy can be observed and analysed [20].
Fig. 2. EEG device, developed by NeuroSky. (MindWave Mobile+)
Fig. 3. Eye-Tracking device developed by Artinis
V. CONCLUSIONS
AI is changing our life style gradually, the way we interact
with the world around us, and companies are aware of such
upcoming change, thereby, marketers need to rethink their
traditional methods of approaching the consumer, and
analyzing his/her behavior. The integration of AI in
Neuromarketing studies, through a scientific combination
with traditional marketing researches, is expected to provide a
deeper understanding of consumer’s behavior toward ads,
branding and the appreciation of the product/service in all its
components, and it will especially help building bias-free
judgments and conclusions. It is out of doubt that AI can
assist marketers in their daily struggle with complicated
marketing problems.
We believe that the combination of AI and marketing can
only be a win-win relationship, as the latter is known to be a
mixture of quantitative and qualitative problems that can be
more accurately solved relying on AI based systems which
represents for AI a unique opportunity to demonstrate its
power. Marketing is also an area where innovation and
creativity plays a fundamental role, and that, will allow AI to
show its artistic and imaginative sides.
In our future research, we will explore the strength of
facials expressions recognition, using AI based tools, in
extracting and analyzing consumer’s emotions in front of
marketing stimuli, also eye-tracking tools can be used for that
matter. However, in the Moroccan academic environment,
funding a research is difficult to find, thus, we will be
exploring some of the low-cost solutions for our empirical
study, among which some facial-expression recognition
solutions offered online.
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Copyright 2019
ISSN 1737-9237
International Journal of Business & Economic Strategy (IJBES)
Vol. 12 pp. 34-38
Copyright 2019
ISSN 1737-9237
International Journal of Business & Economic Strategy (IJBES)
Vol. 12 pp. 34-38