UNETHICAL ADVERTISING-IS NEUROMARKETING AN EXAMPLE?: THE MAJOR CONCERNS AND EFFECTS OF UNETHICAL ADVERTISING IN GLOBAL CONTEXT Abhilasha S. Upadhyaya*1

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*Corresponding Author www.ijmrr.com 285

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT RESEARCH
AND REVIEW
UNETHICAL ADVERTISING-IS NEUROMARKETING AN EXAMPLE?: THE
MAJOR CONCERNS AND EFFECTS OF UNETHICAL ADVERTISING IN
GLOBAL CONTEXT
Abhilasha S. Upadhyaya*1
1Lecturer, Amity School of Business, Amity University, Noida,U.P, India.
ABSTRACT
In the era of Consumerism, one of the most powerfully emerging Marketing techniques is
"Neuromarketing," an approach based on neuroscience. Neuromarketing is the study of the
brains responses to advertising, the brands encountered in our daily lives and all the
associated messages & images that are strewn throughout the cultural landscape of everyday
life. The considerable question arises here is- Has the privacy of Consumer is being affected
by these kind of ultra sophisticated tools which not only interfere with the thinking pattern of
any Consumer but also are not completely ethical.
The primary purpose is to examine the evolving public policy and marketing domain of
consumer privacy as it relates to current and future advertiser strategies and activities. After a
brief introduction, the paper discusses major privacy concern identified in the literature,
focusing on tensions between advertiser interests and consumer needs. The regulatory
environment is chronicled next, emphasizing Federal Trade Commission (FTC) policies and
domains representing old practices and new considerations—direct mail, Internet, and
neuromarketing. The closing section presents a call for coherent rationale and practical
guidelines for consumer self-protection, self-regulation, and legislation involving
primary(product) as well as secondary (informational) exchanges.
Keywords: Neuromarketing, Neurosciences, Measuring Customer Preferences, Neuro
Imaging, Brain Imaging, ethical issues related to Neuromarketing, advertising and consumer
privacy.
INTRODUCTION TO CONSUMER PRIVACY CONCERNS
Consumers have three primary areas of concern: transparency and their levels of awareness
when personal data are collected and disseminated; security and the protocols in place to
ensure information is protected from outside intruders; liability and available remedies if data
are improperly used or errors occur in records. Together, privacy issues require that
consumers have some depth of understanding of the collection process and some perceived
control over usage of their private. This approach maintains a view of privacy as an
individual right that allows consumers to be liberal or conservative as desired regarding
personal information acquisition and treatment, with an emphasis on civil liberties over
advertiser or marketer preferences and goals.
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Several researchers have suggested that this stance is a direct result of natural tensions
between corporate interests and consumer rights (see Culnan and Bies 2003; Sheehan and
Hoy 1999). According to this perspective, businesses must continuously revise files on
current and potential consumers to remain competitive. Yet their actions often fail to consider
buyers’ interests in these matters. For example, the primary marketing transaction is
characterized by mutually agreed upon exchanges of goods or services for monetary return.
However, there may be a secondary exchange of personal information for what advertisers
perceive to be better options and opportunities, such as personalized product offers and lower
prices. Consideration of this shadow marketplace is the domain of advertisers, devoid of
significant communication with consumers.
Furthermore, even when consumers recognize that some portion of their personal data is
publicly available, few fully understand the widespread access and use by marketers and
advertisers. Part of the problem is a true lack of interest in reading lengthy disclosure
warnings unless data are highly personal, such as medical or financial records, and these
circumstances may not be enough to overcome apathy in the face of long passages of
legalese. As a consequence, advertisers can triangulate around multiple sources to profile
potential targets without explicit regard for consumers’ privacy concerns. This problem is
particularly acute if sources are innocuous, such as computer cookies, which are completely
unsolicited electronic tracking devices that provide up-to-the-minute Web utilization records
of consumers’ shopping behaviors.
PRIVACY AND NEUROMARKETING
The newest and least understood potential invasion of privacy by advertisers involves use of
neuro imaging to scan the brains of individuals under various testing condition that used
functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) to demonstrate significant effects of brand
knowledge on brain responses and preferences, advertisers have begun employing brain scans
in their research projects on a rapidly increasing.
The state-of-the-art of brain imaging is far from mind reading, and media portrayals about its
ability to trigger “buy buttons” in your brain or that consumers are “brain scammed”
exaggerate current applications. However, mounting evidence exists that scanning can
identify stimuli in the brain’s complex reward system, thereby unlocking the pathways of
individual pleasure for use in promotions and other communications.
More specifically, new technologies will enable neuroscience and advertising researchers to
better understand the role of emotions in decision making, to develop more effective methods
of triggering those emotions, to build greater trust and brand loyalty, to measure intensity of
likes and dislikes, and, in essence, to be more effective marketers.
As brain scanning and interpretation advances, privacy issues may intensify. Data banks of
brain images already exist for scientific use, and some scans are now employed in secondary
analyses. Previous practices suggest that widespread sharing may occur if the information is
linked to consumer preferences or if it enhances data gathered already by direct advertising or
Internet usage. An added concern is that the rate of incidental pathology findings in subjects
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from neuroscientific studies is 1 to 2%, and provision of these data to firms such as insurance
agencies could place consumers under a new form of risk that may bar them from needed
services rather than facilitate access. If previous lucrative shadow markets for other kinds of
information are any indication, the potential for harm is significant. Furthermore, the brain is
the storehouse of the human personality, and scanning may provide an indirect glimpse into
that persona.
Composing an understandable informed consent agreement to be signed by test participants
will be a complicated task when incidental findings and sensitive reactions are potential
outcomes of an advertising study. Rather than rely on the ethics of firms that profit from
scanning, advertisers and policymakers must face new challenges to privacy that this imaging
may bring.
INTRODUCTION TO NEUROMARKETING
At times, a marketer fails to understand the opinions of target audience and therefore, end up
drafting a wrong answer to the right question. Knowing what the consumer wants involves
emotions and values; and that is what human nature is all about. Advertising or Marketing if
often the first point of contact with the consumer and the questions that every marketer
struggles with is whether it captures the consumers’ attention, engages their emotions and
gets programmed in to their memory or not; what elements of marketing mix are most
effective? Perhaps, most importantly, will it prompt purchase? Its so obvious that traditional
research often cannot answer some or almost all of these questions accurately and hence
Marketer need Neuromarketing, which through neurological science, provide detailed, second
by second responses to these questions, including highly actionable insights into the
effectiveness of advertising. Great advertising strikes a responsive chord with consumers
where it matters most; the subconscious. Only Neurological testing can make the deep impact
that is required to access that level of the brain and discover how it responds to all forms of
marketing, in every medium, hence transforming the brand as a whole. The application of
neuroscience to learn and measure the resonance of a brand provides precise and reliable
guidelines for designing, presenting and communicating the brand positioning to prospective
customers. This understanding of subconscious preferences is the key to building brand
passion and initiating relationships that could last a lifetime.
Neuromarketing is a new field of marketing that studies Consumer’s Sensorimotor, cognitive
and affective response to marketing stimuli. Researchers use technologies such as Functional
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to measure changes in activity in parts of the brain ,
Electroencephalography (EEG) to measure activity specific regional spectra of the brain
response and / or Sensors to measure changes in one’s physiological state (heart rate ,
respiratory rate and galvanic skin response) to learn why consumers make the decisions they
do, and what part of the brain is telling them to do it.
METHODOLOGY OF NEUROMARKETING
Under Neuromarketing, researchers do Brain Imaging. Brain imaging refers to techniques for
watching the human brain as it functions, in real time. The most advanced forms currently are
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three–dimensional electroencephalography using mathematical models; the more familiar
PET scan (positron–emission tomography); the new fMRI (functional magnetic resonance
imaging), which shows brain blood–flow patterns, and MRS (magnetic resonance
spectroscopy), which measures biochemical changes in the brain; and the even newer PET
reporter gene/PET reporter probe, which is, in fact, so new that it still has that length of heavy
lumber for a name. Used so far only in animals and a few desperately sick children, the PET
reporter gene/PET reporter probe pinpoints and follows the activity of specific genes. On a
scanner screen you can actually see the genes light up inside the brain.
The brain is made up of network of Neurons. When this cell clusters are stimulated, they use
more energy. These active areas light up on fMRI scans, allowing scientists to map emotions
and cognition. A giant fMRI brain scanner can possibly reveal what every brand has strived
to discover: the key to understanding how humans unconsciously see their products.
Neuroimaging by a fMRI scanner produces a color-coded image of the brain that predicts
behaviour by revealing a person’s unconscious feelings about a brand or advertisement.
CONSUMER PERSUASION MODEL
Blackholes in Neuromarketing; The ethical issues AND The Hurdles in the way of
Neuromarketing
When we think of Neuromarketing the most innovative approach creates its aura in our brain,
however In my opinion these are some of the basic hurdles or issues that need to be addressed
by Neuromarketers before they can successfully penetrate the mind of people, I am in
complete agreement with the following seven sins mentioned about Neuromarketing in
Forbes Magazine:
1. Neuromarketing seems to be primarily driven by the private industry, not academia. This is
not to say that research into consumer behavior has not occurred at the university level. There
has been a lot of good neuroeconomics research in the last several years. Still, it is mostly
companies in private industry that are driving the application of these findings to practical
consumer behaviors.
2. Neuromarketing is an emerging discipline that will, in time, give us new insight into
human behavior. Unfortunately, little peer-reviewed research has currently been published in
this area. Again, without peer-reviewed results on the effectiveness of neuromarketing
experiments all we have to rely on are self-reports from the neuromarketing firms themselves.
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3. Most people’s introduction to neuromarketing is through press releases, not peer-reviewed
studies.
4. One of the most highly touted aspects of neuromarketing methods is that they are free from
subjectivity and bias on the part of the participant. For example, asking a subject what they
thought of a particular brand introduces the muddying waters of conscious consideration. The
person’s response will be colored by a complex web of tangential cognitive factors and
contextual biases. The promise of neuromarketing is that you can bypass these confounding
factors to get at the heart of the matter – the real representation of the brand. While this is true
to a degree, an entirely new set of confounding factors is introduced during the analysis of
neuromarketing data.
5. Neuromarketing studies are expensive.
6. People are rushing the field to make money in shortcut, and not everyone is trustworthy.
7. The true value of neuromarketing is obscured by the above-mentioned problems.
DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
The central purpose of this paper is that personal information triangulated across a number of
sources has value to current and potential exchange partners. However, this inherent worth
must be balanced against the privacy concerns expressed and implied by consumers who
experience vulnerability and a loss of control as increasingly sensitive data are revealed to
unknown third parties. Literature characterizes original transactions of goods and services for
currency as primal, and exchanges of private consumer records for targeted promotions and
special offers as secondary (Franzak, Pitta, and Fritsche 2001). Yet this perspective fails to
recognize that most of the value from the customer side of the equation is driven by the
former, while the latter provides significantly more utility to marketers and advertisers. In the
end, this shadow marketplace seems to foster an unbalanced exchange relationship that may
be seen as one-sided. Additional challenges have manifested as technological applications
advance. For example, computer equipment has intensified the ability of direct marketers to
assimilate across sources and types of data to create increasingly more accurate consumer
profiles. The principle concern is expressed as the ability to opt-in or opt-out of mailing lists
and subsequent advertisements and promotional deals depending on their salience to the
individuals involved. Online privacy concerns move to the next level of invasiveness since
firms are able to monitor and record precise movements and behaviors along with more
generic descriptive data. When collection techniques include brain scans, privacy issues take
on a new dimension due to potential for misuse that ultimately may reduce access to
employment, insurance, credit, and other essential services.
CONCLUSION
In an era of consumerism, where the power has shifted to consumers and they demand for
more and more Brands have started listening to the consumers and technology (social media)
has been instrumental in making this possible. Brands undoubtedly have more work to do but
the good part is that they know what has to be done. The deep understanding of subconscious
preferences by Neurosciences and Neuromarketing will help build brand passion for a
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lifetime. Privacy issues will remain significant as long as humanity exists. However, the ways
violations manifest could escalate as our abilities to organize and manipulate data change
over time and the sources of information become increasingly sensitive.
As a consequence, regulatory processes and practices also must evolve to include a revised
way of looking at rights and responsibilities across a number of constituencies, with
consumers prominent among them. Such efforts must emanate from an understanding that the
terrain is too large for any one organizational form, including government, to effectively
control regardless of intentions. Therefore, evaluative frames and solutions must be
negotiated within the belief that involved parties should actively participate in relevant
political discussions that inform voluntary self-regulation and legislation.
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