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TUESDAY, Nov. 28 (HealthDay News) -- Marketers may have your number, neurologically speaking: A new study finds that familiar brands evoke faster, more positive responses in the brain than lesser-known brands.
In tests on young adults using real-time functional MRI (fMRI), the logos of well-known auto and insurance companies "lit up" areas of the brain associated with warm emotions, reward and self-identity.
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"Furthermore, strong brands were processed with less effort on the part of the brain," said Dr. Christine Born, a radiologist at University Hospital, part of the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany.
In contrast, less-recognized brands triggered more activity in brain regions associated with working memory and negative emotions -- suggesting these products were less easy to "process" and accept.
"Clearly, brands are important, and people do neuropsych tests and all sorts of things to try and understand how to make branding better within the industry," added Paul Sanberg, director of the Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa.
"Branding is extremely important, and this just adds another level to that," said Sanberg, who was not involved in the study.
The findings, scheduled for presentation Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago, are the latest from the emerging field of "neuroeconomics."
In neuroeconomics, psychologists, neuroscientists, radiologists and marketing experts work together to unravel the mysteries of the consumer's mind.
"The vision of this research is to better understand the needs of people and to create markets which are more oriented towards satisfaction of these needs and by doing so, avoiding flops in launching new products or services," Born explained. She said the new work is important because it is "the first fMRI-based benchmark test examining the power of brands" on the human brain.
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