Research in reverse: Ad testing using an inductive consumer neuroscience approach

Abstract

Consumer neuroscience (CNS) methodologies were adapted from scientific disciplines where research is done in reverse from the scientific method that has come to inform the vast majority of marketing research. Conventional applications of CNS often begin with known outcomes and implications (i.e., symptomologies), subject them to neuro-physiological tests, and use the data from these tests to generate descriptive (e.g., diagnosis) and prescriptive (e.g., prognosis) hypotheses. This article offers the heretical proposition that such an approach should not be limited to the “hard sciences,” but could be profoundly beneficial in fields that have come to exclusively rely upon the scientific method. Findings of a dEEG study conducted on the basis of known results in order to generate novel theory and hypotheses are presented. Implications of this paradigm shift for advancing marketing research while helping to bridge an ever-widening scholar–practitioner divide are discussed.