Your brain may have decided what to buy even before you have sampled what is on offer, such is the power of brands.
A new study gauging the brain's response to product branding has found that strong brands elicit strong activity in our brains.
The findings were presented on Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, which is the 92nd Scientific Assembly, a world's largest annual medical meeting where around 70,000 radiological experts have assembled for the five-day event in Chicago.
"This is the first functional magnetic resonance imaging test examining the power of brands," said Christine Born, radiologist at University Hospital in Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich in Germany.
"We found that strong brands activate certain areas of the brain independent
of product categories." Brain branding is a novel, interdisciplinary approach to improve the understanding of how the mind perceives and processes brands.
Using modern imaging methods, researchers are now able to go beyond marketing surveys and gather information on how the brain responds to a particular brand at the most basic level.
"Brain imaging technologies may complement methods normally used in the developing area of neuroeconomics," Born said.
The results also showed that strong brands activated a network of cortical areas and areas involved in positive emotional processing and associated with self-identification and rewards.
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