Paper
A Ticket for Your Thoughts: Method for Predicting Content Recall and Sales Using Neural Similarity of Moviegoers
Published Jun 1, 2017 · S. Barnett, Moran Cerf
Journal of Consumer Research
102
Citations
4
Influential Citations
Abstract
Skilled advertisers often cause a diverse set of consumers to feel similarly about their product. We present a method for measuring neural data to assess the degree of similarity between multiple brains experiencing the same advertisements, and we demonstrate that this similarity can predict important marketing outcomes. Since neural data can be sampled continuously throughout an experience and without effort and conscious reporting biases, our method offers a useful complement to measures requiring active evaluations, such as subjective ratings and willingness-to-pay (WTP) scores. As a case study, we use portable electroencephalography (EEG) systems to record the brain activity of 58 moviegoers in a commercial theater and then calculate the relative levels of neural similarity, cross-brain correlation (CBC), throughout 13 movie trailers. Our initial evidence suggests that CBC predicts future free recall of the movie trailers and population-level sales of the corresponding movies. Additionally, since there are potentially other (i.e., non-neural) sources of physiological similarity (e.g., basic arousal), we illustrate how to use other passive measures, such as cardiac, respiratory, and electrodermal activity levels, to reject alternative hypotheses. Moreover, we show how CBC can be used in conjunction with empirical content analysis (e.g., levels of visual and semantic complexity).
Cross-brain correlation (CBC) can predict future free recall of movie trailers and population-level sales of corresponding movies, offering a useful complement to active evaluation methods.
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