Neuromarketing research in the last five years: A bibliometric analysis

Alsharif, Ahmed H.; Nor Zafir Md Salleh; Rohaizat Baharun; Alharthi Rami Hashem E Article Neuromarketing research in the last five years: A bibliometric analysis Cogent Business & Management Provided in Cooperation with: Taylor & Francis Group Suggested Citation: Alsharif, Ahmed H.; Nor Zafir Md Salleh; Rohaizat Baharun; Alharthi Rami Hashem E (2021) : Neuromarketing research in the last five years: A bibliometric analysis, Cogent Business & Management, ISSN 2331-1975, Taylor & Francis, Abingdon, Vol. 8, Iss. 1, pp. 1-26, https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/245132 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license. Published online: 06 Oct 2021. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 355 View related articles View Crossmark data MARKETING | REVIEW ARTICLE Neuromarketing research in the last five years: a bibliometric analysis Ahmed H. Alsharif 1 , Nor Zafir Md Salleh 1 , Rohaizat Baharun 1 and Alharthi Rami Hashem E 1,2 * Abstract: Neuromarketing (NM) is an application of neuroimaging and physiological tools to record the neural correlates of consumers’ behaviour (e.g., decision-making, emotion, attention, and memory) toward marketing stimuli such as brands and advertisements. This study aims to present the current tools employed in the empirical research in the last five years. In this article, we have followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) framework and a bibliometric analysis to select empirical and review papers that used NM tools in the last five years. We have extracted and analysed twenty-four documents from the Scopus database to answer our study questions. We found that electroencephalography (EEG) is the most popular neuroimaging tool in neuromarketing research, wherein has been used almost thirteen times. Followed by eyetracking (ET) and galvanic skin response (GSR) as the most physiological tools, wherein have been applied almost four times for each tool. We hope that this study provides valuable insights into the common NM tools used in marketing research. Subjects: Marketing; Marketing Research; Consumer Behaviour ABOUT THE AUTHORS Ahmed H. Alsharif is a PhD student of Azman Hashim International Business School (AHIBS) at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia. His main research interests are neuromarketing, consumer behaviour, advertising, emotional and cognitive processes. He has published several research papers in the field of neuromarketing and consumer behaviour. Nor Zafir Md Salleh is a Senior Lecturer of Marketing at AHIBS, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Her current research interests include culture and heritage, service innovation, Islamic tourism, marketing. Rohaizat Baharun is a professor of marketing at AHIBS, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. He became a visiting professor for local and international universities. His current research interests include educational marketing, retailing management, and customer behaviour. Alharthi Rami Hashem E is a PhD student at AHIBS, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia. His research interests are product placement, brand placement and integration, brand attitudes, implicit association test (IAT), persuasion knowledge. PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT The rising interest in exploring the neural and physiological reactions of consumers toward marketing stimuli such as advertisements and brands paid scholars and practitioners to employ physiological (e.g., ET, EMG, GSR, ECG) and neurophysiological (e.g., fMRI, EEG, ERP) tools in marketing research to explore, understand, analyze, explain, and predict the consumer’s behaviour such as decision-making, the emotional (e.g., emotion) and cognitive (e.g., attention and memory) processes toward marketing stimuli. This study provides the global research trend in the neuromarketing field according to the outputs of publications such as the most productive countries, academic institutions, journals, authors, number of publications and citations. Alsharif et al., Cogent Business & Management (2021), 8: 1978620 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 Page 1 of 26 Received: 08 May 2021 Accepted: 05 September 2021 *Corresponding author: Alharthi Rami Hashem E, Azman Hashim International Business School (AHIBS), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Skudai, Johor 81310, Malaysia E-mail: ramihasheme@graduate. utm.my; [email protected] Reviewing editor: Manish Gupta, HR, IBS Hyderabad, IFHE University, INDIA Additional information is available at the end of the article © 2021 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license. Keywords: Neuromarketing; bibliometric analysis; physiological tools; neuroimaging tools 1. Introduction Techniques and methodologies are highly important in the hyper-competitive environment, this has prompted companies to seek new effective methods to better understanding and predicting consumer behaviour. Thus, scholars have investigated how marketing research can benefit from these techniques to develop marketing practices and advertising research. Wherein, the fMRI investigation showed that most of the consumers’ behaviour and decision-making are made beyond awareness that highly contributed to the purchase decisions (Agarwal & Dutta, 2015; Alsharif, Salleh, Baharun, & Effandi, 2021; Brierley, 2017). That study was a threshold for a new approach of studying consumer behaviour by using neuroscience technology in business research, which has called “neuromarketing”. NM is located on the borderline between marketing, neuroscience, and psychology (Alsharif et al., 2021a; Alvino et al., 2020). Traditional research methods were largely used self-report (e.g., surveys, focus groups) to study the responses of consumers (e.g., decision-making) toward marketing stimuli such as advertisements and brands (J. Harris et al., 2018). Self-report relies on the consciousness of the consumer behaviour and overlooks the unconscious; thereby, mismatching between what consumer says and does. Therefore, traditional research methods provide inaccurate and unreliable information about consumer’s behaviour (Alsharif et al., 2021b; Alsharif, Salleh, Baharun, & Effandi, 2021), which has led to infer that most products and ads have failed in the first year (Jordao et al., 2017; Vecchiato et al., 2015). Accordingly, the majority of consumer’s behaviour (e.g., decision-making, perception) occurs unconsciously, which is not possible for predicting by traditional research methods (Alsharif, Salleh, Baharun, Hashem, et al., 2021; Alsharif, Salleh, Baharun, & Effandi, 2021). According to Ramsoy (Ramsoy, 2015), NM tools have been divided into four categories: (i) neuroimaging tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET), electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), steady-state topography (SST), functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and single photon emission tomography (SPET); (ii) Physiological techniques such as the electrocardiogram (ECG), eye-tracking (ET), electromyography (EMG), galvanic skin response (GSR) (Isabella et al., 2015); (iii) Self-report such as questionnaires, interviews, and fouc groups; (iv) behavioural measurement such as implicit association test (IAT). For instance, physiological tools can record the physiological functions of consumers (e.g., breathing, heartbeat, pupil dilation, saccade, fixation, eye movements, sweating, and facial muscle movements) during exposure to advertisements (Hamelin et al., 2017). Meanwhile, neuroimaging tools enable to record of the dimensions of emotion, attention, and memory toward ads (Alsharif, Salleh, Baharun, Hashem, et al., 2021; Cherubino et al., 2019). According to the literature, EEG and fMRI are the most popular neuroimaging tools in NM research (Alsharif, Salleh, Baharun, Hashem, et al., 2021; Alsharif, Salleh, Baharun, & Safaei, 2020), meanwhile, ET is the most popular physiological tool. The main goal of NM is a better understanding of the neural correlates of emotion, attention, memory, and decision-making in advertising campaigns (Alsharif, Salleh, Baharun, Hashem E et al., 2021; Alvino, 2019). Therefore, NM has enormously received attention from an academic and industrial environment to employ these tools in consumer research to study concealed consumer reactions such as emotional and cognitive responses toward marketing stimuli (Hamelin et al., 2017). From an academic perspective, the publications number of NM has been remarkably increased since the last decade (Alsharif, Salleh, & Baharun, 2020). From an industrial perspective, the number of NM companies (e.g., Millward, Emsense) has been increased (Rawnaque et al., 2020). Consequently, NM research has attracted companies and scholars to use NM tools in their research to overcome Alsharif et al., Cogent Business & Management (2021), 8: 1978620 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 Page 2 of 26 the limitations/restrictions of the orthodox methods and solving the marketing issues (Alsharif, Salleh, Baharun, & Safaei, 2020; Morin, 2011; Sebastian, 2014). Consequently, the contribution of neuroscientific methods became significant to enrich research about consumer behaviour in a new millennium of marketing that led several authors to speak about the benefits of NM (Lee et al., 2017; Ramsoy, 2015; Songsamoe et al., 2019). Several studies provide an overview of the most popular NM techniques which can be used in marketing research, for example, fMRI. However, there is a lack of investigation in NM studies that were employed physiological and neuroimaging techniques in the last five years to guide scholars and practitioners. Hence, the current study presents the current trend of NM research and the most NM tools (e.g., physiological and neurophysiological) used in marketing research in the last five years. We reviewed the literature to address the following research questions: RQ1: What are the most-cited articles in the neuromarketing domain between 2004 and 2019? RQ2: What are the most productive countries and authors in the neuromarketing domain between 2004 and 2019? RQ3: What are the studies that employed neuromarketing tools in the last five years? Answering these questions will give us a comprehensive knowledge of the current tools and studies employed in empirical NM research. To this end, this study seeks to combine as many directions as possible, besides, common research subjects are investigated deeply based on subdomains to accomplish a precise, concrete, and concise conclusion. The key contributions of the current study are summarized as follow. ●The first study has reviewed, analysed, and discussed the latest studies that used neuromarketing tools in empirical research between 2015 and 2019. ●The first bibliometric analysis that shed light on the most trend global contributions in the neuromarketing field from 2004 to 2019. In this vein, this study paper provides the methodology and data collection techniques in section 2. Section 3, presents the analysis of bibliometric, the studies used physiological and neurophysiological tools used in marketing research. Sections 4 and 5 present the discussion and conclusion of the study. 2. Methods To answer the RQ1, RQ2, bibliometric analysis has been used in the current study to understand the global trends in NM, a bibliometric analysis provides the global trends such as the most productive journals, authors, countries and academics/institutions, and the most-cited articles in relevant topics based on the outputs of the publication from 2004 to 2019. To answer the RQ3, we have followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework recommended by Moher, et al. (Moher et al., 2015) to select empirical articles that used neurophysiological and physiological tools in marketing research in the last five years. The current study is characterized by extracting articles from the Scopus database relevant to our study. However, we also followed instructions recommended by Block and Fisch (Block & Fisch, 2020) to present an impactful bibliometric analysis and assess the structure of a particular research area. This process will help us to better understand the advancement of the NM field. We first have used the following query “neuromarketing” to select relevant articles from the Scopus database. Figure 1 shows the accumulative and annual publications in the NM domain from 2004 to 2019. We found 479 publications based on abstract, title, and keywords. Alsharif et al., Cogent Business & Management (2021), 8: 1978620 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 Page 3 of 26 As depicted in Figure 2, we followed the PRISMA framework, which includes four stages: (i) identification as recording identified through database searching, (ii) screening the record documents, (iii) eligibility documents, and (iv) selecting studies, as follows: ●Empirical articles published between 2015 and 2019 were included. ●We excluded any other documents (e.g., conference papers, reviews) were excluded. ●We excluded any publications in the non-English language. Figure 1. The number of publications in the neuromarketing research. Figure 2. PRISMA Flow chart. Alsharif et al., Cogent Business & Management (2021), 8: 1978620 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 Page 4 of 26 A total of thirty-four documents were extracted and after reviewed documents one by one, ten documents were excluded; therefore, a total of twenty-four documents were selected for this study based on the article questions. According to literature, the first article in NM was carried out in 2003 and published in 2004 by McClure, et al. (McClure et al., 2004). In addition, we have classified the selected documents based on the tool that used in the study, which includes three categories as tabulated in Table 1. Table 1. Classification of neuromarketing tools in selected articles Category Device Author’s name Neuroimaging fMRI Jung, et al. (Jung et al., 2018), Chen, et al. (Y. P. Chen et al., 2015), Cascio, et al. (Cascio et al., 2015), Chen and Morris (Chen & Morris, 2016), Venkatraman, et al. (Venkatraman et al., 2015) EEG Chew, et al. (Chew et al., 2016), Goto, et al. (Goto et al., 2019), Yang, et al. (Yang et al., 2018), Harris, et al. (J. M. Harris et al., 2019), Cartocci, et al. (Cartocci et al., 2017), Ramsoy, et al. (Ramsoy et al., 2018), Yang and Kim (Yang & Kim, 2019), Goto, et al. (Goto et al., 2017), Wei et al. (Wei et al., 2018), Wang, et al. (Wang et al., 2018), Ma, et al. (Ma et al., 2019), Venkatraman, et al. (Venkatraman et al., 2015) ERP Ma, et al. (Ma et al., 2018), Goto, et al. (Goto et al., 2019), Yang, et al. (Yang et al., 2018), Yang and Kim (Yang & Kim, 2019), Goto, et al. (Goto et al., 2017), Wang, et al. (Wang et al., 2018), Ma, et al. (Ma et al., 2019) Behavioural IAT Grigaliūnaitė and Pilelienė (Grigaliūnaitė & Pilelienė, 2017), Pilelienė and Grigaliūnaitė (Pilelienė & Grigaliūnaitė, 2017), Venkatraman, et al. (Venkatraman et al., 2015) Self-report Venkatraman, et al. (Venkatraman et al., 2015) Physiological ECG Cartocci, et al. (Cartocci et al., 2017), Halkin (Halkin, 2018) GSR Andrii, et al. (Andrii et al., 2019), Cartocci, et al. (Cartocci et al., 2017), Halkin (Halkin, 2018), Venkatraman, et al. (Venkatraman et al., 2015) Face Reader Lewinski (Lewinski, 2015) ET Grigaliunaite and Pileliene (Grigaliunaite & Pileliene, 2016), Oliveira and Giraldi (Oliveira & Giraldi, 2019), Pilelienė and Grigaliūnaitė (Pilelienė & Grigaliūnaitė, 2017), Venkatraman, et al. (Venkatraman et al., 2015) fMRI. Functional magnetic resonance imaging; EEG. Electroencephalography; ERP. Event-related potential; Hr. Heart rate; GSR. Galvanic skin response; ET. Eye tracking, IAT. Implicit Association Test; EMG. Electromyography. Alsharif et al., Cogent Business & Management (2021), 8: 1978620 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 Page 5 of 26 Hence, this review includes empirical articles that used physiological and neurophysiological tools to investigate the consumers’ reactions toward marketing stimuli (e.g., advertising, branding, product) within a marketing context. We will read, analyse, and summarized these articles in Table 8 to accomplish the purpose of this review paper. 3. Result 3.1. Bibliometric analysis 3.1.1. Leading countries and academic institutions We have reviewed and analyzed the twenty-four documents from the Scopus database, as tabulated in Table 2. Table 2 demonstrates that almost 50% of the total papers were published by the USA, Spain, Italy, UK, Germany, which lead to infer that these countries are key players in the improvement of NM research. As we can observe from Table 1, the USA is the top producing country in the NM field with almost seventy-seven papers, four of these papers published by Emory University. Spain is considered the second most productive country with forty-eight papers. Followed by Italy, UK, Germany with thirty-eight, thirty-three, thirty papers, respectively. China and Japan were placed in the 6th, 7th, and 8th position in the list of the ten most productive countries with twenty-six, twentyone, and twenty-one papers, consecutively. Finally, countries that published less than twenty papers such as Malaysia and Turkey with nineteen and seventeen papers. Although Italy is in the third position among the most ten productive countries around the world, its Universita Degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza is considered as the most productive academic institution among other countries institutions with twenty-four papers. Followed by Bucharest University of Economic Studies with twelve papers, then Zhejiang University in China with nine papers. Seven and six papers were published by Universidade da Coruña and the University of Oxford. Emory University, Zeppelin University, Toyama Prefectural University, University Sains Malaysia were contributed with four articles for each one. Finally, Galatasaray Üniversitesi has published three papers. 3.1.2. Leading authors We have found that the ten most productive authors in the NM topic were affiliated with three countries (e.g., Italy, UK, and China) as shown in Table 3. The total number of publications by these authors was 107 documents. In addition, the four most productive authors in the list are Babiloni, Table 2. The 10 most productive countries and academic institutions in neuromarketing Country TP The most productive institution TPi USA 77 Emory University 4 Spain 48 Universidade da Coruña 7 Italy 38 Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza 24 UK 33 University of Oxford 6 Germany 30 Zeppelin University 4 China 26 Zhejiang University 9 Japan 21 Toyama Prefectural University 4 Romania 21 Bucharest University of Economic Studies 12 Malaysia 19 Universiti Sains Malaysia 4 Turkey 17 Galatasaray Üniversitesi 3 TP; total publications; TPi; total publication by institutions Alsharif et al., Cogent Business & Management (2021), 8: 1978620 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 Page 6 of 26 F., Vecchiato, G., Cherubino, P., and Astolfi, L. from Italy with a total of 22, 17, 10, and 9 documents, 508, 383, 147, and 297 citations, respectively. Lee, N. from the UK, is the most fifth productive author with a total of 9 documents since 2007, 473 citations, and seven h-index. Interestingly, Toppi, J. is the least productive author within the top ten list, with 226 citations and eight h-index. 3.1.3. Journal outcomes The findings indicate that seven publisher agencies owned the top ten most productive journals, as tabulated in Table 4. Springer Nature has published three documents of them. Followed by Frontiers Media S.A which published two documents. The rest were published by APA, Cogent OA, Elsevier, Emerald, and the Advertising Research Foundation. Moreover, the most productive journal was Advances In Intelligent System and Computing with 9 documents. Frontier in Neuroscience has published eight documents with 128 citations. Journal Of Economic Psychology has published the most cited document among the top ten list with 250 citations, while Communications In Computer And Information Science journal was published the least cited document with 6 citations. The answer to the RQ1, the most-cited journal is the Journal Of Table 3. The ten most productive authors in neuromarketing topic Author’s name Year of 1 st publication TP TC H-index Affiliation Country Babiloni, F. 2008 22 508 10 Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza Italy Vecchiato, G. 2010 17 383 8 Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Italy Cherubino, P. 2011 10 147 6 Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza Italy Astolfi, L. 2008 9 297 6 Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza Italy Lee, N. 2007 9 473 7 Warwick Business School UK Cincotti, F. 2008 8 283 5 Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza Italy Ma, Q. 2007 8 145 6 Ningbo University China Maglione, A. G. 2011 8 152 5 Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza Italy Mattia, D. 2008 8 283 5 IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Italy Toppi, J. 2010 8 226 5 Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza Italy TP; total publications; TC; total citations Alsharif et al., Cogent Business & Management (2021), 8: 1978620 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 Page 7 of 26 5. Implication of the research findings for theory and practice Theoretically, the current findings can be divided into three folds, as follow: Firstly, physiological tools such as ET, GSR, EMG, and ECG can provide beneficial insights about the physiological correlate of consumer behaviour, while neuroimaging tools such as fMRI and EEG enables to capture the neural correlates of emotion processes(e.g., pleasure, motivations, and arousal), cognitive processes (e.g., attention, recall, recognition, and memory) toward marketing stimuli such as advertisements and brands. Secondly, marketers and advertisers will be able to identify the attractiveness and aversion aspects in advertising campaigns before using them in the real world; therefore, recognize the aspects that cause aversion attitude toward advertising and fix them, additionally, reinforce the strengths aspects that drive the consumer to pleasure and making decisions. Third, the majority of the studies focused on detecting the impact of advertising campaigns on consumers’ behaviour; therefore, the ability to predict consumer behaviour. In addition, there are some studies focused on spokesperson’s gender, ads appeal, warm colour temperature and cool colour temperature, celebrity face, social initiatives (i.e., anti-smoking), and public health in advertising campaigns. Therefore, these three folds together can explain the neural and physiological correlates of motivation, reward, and perception processes of interest for advertising. An application of this research might offer measurable explanations of how advertising works in consumers’ minds which is reflected in the bodily responses of consumers, thereby, creating attractive advertising in several domains such as political, social and business. 6. Conclusion and future work NM plays a vital role whether in social advertisements or commercial advertisements. This study was conducted to concentrate on studies that employed the NM tools in practical research from 2015 to 2019, wherein authors found that the EEG is more common in experiments in the NM field because it has excellent temporal accuracy and less cost. It also used a bibliometric analysis to understand the global research trends in the NM field based on the outputs of academic publications such as the most-cited article and journal. Along with a literature review to evaluate and analyze the previous studies that employed NM tools in empirical research such as neuroimaging, physiological, and behavioural tools. It was analyzed 24 empirical articles from the Scopus database and it was noticed that NM research has increased globally since 2004. The authors identified, reviewed, and analyzed the relevant articles to know how these studies used the most common words. Then these studies were summarized and their major contribution and findings were detailed in Table 8. Table 7. Clusters of countries that produced the empirical article in the last five years Category Country Links Total Link Strength Avg. norm. citations Cluster 1 UK 9 296 1.79 Italy 10 31 1.93 Australia 10 23 3.43 Ukraine 2 2 1.20 South Korea 3 13 0.46 China 11 128 0.65 Cluster 2 Brazil 10 302 0.43 Japan 9 293 0.86 Malaysia 9 478 1.47 Germany 9 478 1.39 Cluster 3 USA 9 126 2.33 Denmark 9 126 2.33 Alsharif et al., Cogent Business & Management (2021), 8: 1978620 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 Page 14 of 26 Table 8. A summary of the selected articles that were discussed in this research to identify the titles, objectives, methods, findings, and limits of the studies Author & Year Title Major contribution Method (Device) Finding summary Limit of the Study Andrii, et al. (Andrii et al., 2019) Attractiveness modeling of retail on emotional fatigue of consumers Trying to study emotional fatigue and its impact on choosing the retailer and the purchase decision process. GSR The atmosphere in the store and the consumer’s state impact the emotional fatigue differently; thereby, the footfall. 15 different retailers shops Goto, et al. (Goto et al., 2019) Can brain waves really tell if a product will be purchased? Inferring consumer preferences from single-item brain potentials Examining if single-item ERPs could predict the consumer’s preference for a specific product accurately and reliability. EEG/ERP The accuracy of prediction toward consumer’s preference to specific products is almost 70.8% by using SI-ERPs, and also the accuracy vary based on ERPs type. LPP and PSW were better than N200 in predicting consumer’s preferences. In addition, group-related ERPs could differentiate between high preferred and less preferred significantly. Twelve specific product pictures Harris, et al. (J. M. Harris et al., 2019) Consumer neuroscience and digital/social media health/ social cause advertisement effectiveness Developing and evaluating the effectiveness of action/ emotion-based public health and social cause advertisements through the use of consumer neuroscience (e.g., cognitive neuroscience and affective neuroscience). EEG and online survey Emotion-based advertisements are more effective than rational-based advertisements; thereby, led to positive change in decision-making, increasing donation, and more liking. Public health advertisements in Australia. (Continued) Alsharif et al., Cogent Business & Management (2021), 8: 1978620 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 Page 15 of 26 Table 8. (Continued) Author & Year Title Major contribution Method (Device) Finding summary Limit of the Study Yang and Kim (Yang & Kim, 2019) Group-level neural responses to the service-to-service brand extension Investigating the consumers’ neural processes related to the judgment of brand extension and propose the new stimulus to find appropriate and inappropriate S2S brand extension. EEG/ERP Showing that the neural processes engaged in assessing the S2S brand extension may be involved in assessing the G2G brand extension. In addition, the left frontoparietal P300 may provide neural evidence for the acceptability of a new S2S brand extension. brand extension Oliveira and Giraldi (Oliveira & Giraldi, 2019) Neuromarketing and its implications for operations management: an experiment with two brands of beer Discussing the influence of well-known brands advertising on adults visual selective attention during consumption of alcoholic beverages. Besides, Helping to create more effective products and advertising campaigns. Eye-tracking (Tobii EyeTracking hardware model X1L) There are remarkable differences in visual selective attention among young adults, wherein the strong brand had greater visual attention compared with others. Alcoholic beverages Ma, et al. (Ma et al., 2019) The influence of the consumer ethnocentrism and cultural familiarity on brand preference: Evidence of event-related potential Exploring the influence of ethnic affiliation (e.g., Black African people and Chinese people) toward brand preference. EEG/ERP The logo of the brand has highly influenced the Chinese participants’ preference toward brands. Brand logo preference Wang, et al. (Wang et al., 2018) The effects of money on fake rating behavior in e-commerce: Electrophysiological time course evidence from consumers Exploring whether RN or RI strategy is more strongly impact the online fake rating behavior of the consumers. EEG/ERP RI strategy has more impact on the online fake comments behavior of the consumer. Online fake comments behavior Wei, et al. (Wei, Wu, Wang, Supratak, Wang, Guo et al., 2018) Using support vector machine on EEG for advertisement impact assessment evaluating advertisement influence and the potential of consumers buying the advertised product. EEG and Questionnaire The percentage of purchasing power was relatively high after watching the advertising. Purchasing intention (Continued) Alsharif et al., Cogent Business & Management (2021), 8: 1978620 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 Page 16 of 26 Table 8. (Continued) Author & Year Title Major contribution Method (Device) Finding summary Limit of the Study Ma, et al. (Ma et al., 2018) You win, you buyHow continuous win effect influence consumers’ price perception: An ERP study Examining whether the emotional arousal will influence the price perceptions; thereby, the purchase decisions of the participant. ERP/EEG The participants’ price perception was highly influenced by participants’ emotions (win/lose experience). emotions produced from continuous/ single wins were more positive than continuous/ single losses. While continuous wins/loses evoked more intense emotions compared to single win/lose. sixty hard-disc pictures Yang, et al. (Yang et al., 2018) Characteristics of human brain activity during the evaluation of service-toservice brand extension Investigating neural activities of cognitive processes underlying the assessment of service-to-service brand extension. In addition, developing a method of grouping stimuli to find the fit levels of behavior responses toward a serviceto-service brand extension. EEG/ERP It can elicit higher positive amplitude in P3 by low-fit stimuli. While mid and highfit stimuli elicited higher negative amplitude at N400. Whereas low, mid, and highfit did not show any significant difference at N2. The cognitive neural activity might differ between S2S brand extension and G2G brand extension. 56 text stimuli. (Continued) Alsharif et al., Cogent Business & Management (2021), 8: 1978620 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 Page 17 of 26 Table 8. (Continued) Author & Year Title Major contribution Method (Device) Finding summary Limit of the Study Halkin (Halkin, 2018) Emotional state of consumer in the urban purchase: processing data Estimating the consumer’s emotional state (emotional fatigue) during the visit to any shop. GSR (NeuLog GSR) and heartbeat per minute (BPM) (NeuLog Pulse) Entering the consumer to the supermarket, then take demanded products, and waiting in the cashier line generates a consumer’s emotional reaction, which refers to an increase of consumer’s fatigue index inside the shops and decreases on the road back to home, overall it is still higher than at home situation. Emotional fatigue Ramsoy, et al. (Ramsoy et al., 2018) Frontal brain asymmetry and willingness to pay Exploring and examining the potential role of the prefrontal asymmetry in calculating willingness to pay. EEG Illustrating that asymmetry in the prefrontal cortex in the gamma and beta band was highly related to subsequent WTP responses, and the gamma band was most strongly related to WTP decision. WTP Jung, et al. (Jung et al., 2018) The neural correlates of celebrity power on product favorableness: An fMRI study Investigating the neural correlates of celebrity power in influencing the car favorableness in advertising. fMRI The rewards, memory, semantics, and attention regions in the brain were lighted up with viewing a combination of celebrity face and a car compared with viewing a combination of non-celebrity face and a car. In addition, a car favorableness correlated positively with activation in the left anterior insula, left OFC, and left higher-order visual cortex in the OL. Celebrity face and favorableness car (Continued) Alsharif et al., Cogent Business & Management (2021), 8: 1978620 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 Page 18 of 26 Table 8. (Continued) Author & Year Title Major contribution Method (Device) Finding summary Limit of the Study Pilelienė and Grigaliūnaitė (Pilelienė & Grigaliūnaitė, 2017) Relationship between spokesperson’s gender and advertising color temperature in a framework of advertising effectiveness Studying and analyzing the influence of color temperature of pictures and the gender of spokesperson on the advertising effectiveness. Eye Tracking (Tobii EyeTracking Glasses) The warm color temperature attracts more visual attention to the advertisement; thereby, generates a positive implicit attitude to the advertisement and induces the buying intentions of the advertised products compared with cool color temperature advertisements whether the spokesperson’s female or male celebrity. Therefore, The color temperature impacts the effectiveness of the advertising spokesperson and advertising effectiveness. 10 pictures (5 warm color temperature (3000 K) and 5 cool color temperature (6000 K)) once with female celebrity, and once with male celebrity. Goto, et al. (Goto et al., 2017) Neural signals of selective attention are modulated by subjective preferences and buying decisions in a virtual shopping task Investigating whether the famous neural markers of selective attention were modified by differences in subjective preference to products. EEG/ERP The variations in subjective preferences toward goods have strongly modulated PSW and LPP by subsequent purchasing decisions. Therefore, LPP and PSW could reflect conscious cognitive processes (e.g., selective attention). The selective attention markers (Continued) Alsharif et al., Cogent Business & Management (2021), 8: 1978620 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 Page 19 of 26 Table 8. (Continued) Author & Year Title Major contribution Method (Device) Finding summary Limit of the Study Grigaliunaite and Pileliene (Grigaliunaite & Pileliene, 2017) Attitude toward smoking: the effect of negative smokingrelated pictures Identifying the explicit and implicit attitudes of individuals toward smoking by determining the impact of a negative picture of smoking. IAT and Questionnaire The consumers’ attitude was highly impacted the purchase decisions. In addition, conventional methods lack to measure explicit attitude accurately; thereby, both NM and conventional marketing methods complement each other to reveal the consumers’ attitude. Pictures Cartocci, et al. (Cartocci et al., 2017) Electroencephalographic, heart rate, and galvanic skin response assessment for an advertising perception study: Application to antismoking public service announcements Presenting a series of methods that could lead to the accurate measurement of the cerebral and emotional perception of antismoking PSAs. EEG, HR, and GSR A campaign of PSAs characterized by a symbolic communication style obtained the highest approach values, as evaluated by the AW index. While an image and a spot based on the “fear arousing appeal” and with a narrative style reported the highest and lowest effort values index, respectively. Also, the same “effective” campaign showed the highest EI values. Social Campaign (antismoking) Chew, et al. (Chew et al., 2016) Aesthetic preference recognition of 3D shapes using EEG Identifying the process and approach to recognizing individuals’ aesthetic preference for 3D shapes. EEG The rhythms from frontal channels Fz, F3, and F4 are suitable for the identification of human preference (e.g., like and dislike) toward moving 3D shapes. Aesthetic preference (Continued) Alsharif et al., Cogent Business & Management (2021), 8: 1978620 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 Page 20 of 26 Table 8. (Continued) Author & Year Title Major contribution Method (Device) Finding summary Limit of the Study Chen and Morris (Chen & Morris, 2016) Decoding neural responses To emotion in Television Commercials To measure emotional response to TV ads fMRI The dimensions of emotion (e.g., appeal, engagement, and empowerment) are playing a vital role in measuring feelings toward TV ads. TV ads Grigaliunaite and Pileliene (Grigaliunaite & Pileliene, 2016) Emotional or rational? The determination of the influence of advertising appeal on advertising effectiveness Determining the impact of advertising appeal on print/ outdoor advertising effectiveness; thereby, developing the model of the influence of advertising appeal on advertising effectiveness. Eye-tracking (Tobii Eye Tracking Glasses), IAT, and Questionnaire Firstly, in the cognitive stage to consumer’s response toward print/ outdoor advertising can achieve effectiveness by applying either the emotional or rational appeal. Secondly, in the affective stage, the application of emotional advertising appeal is more effective. Lastly, in the conative stage, the application of rational advertising appeal is more effective. Ads appeal Lewinski (Lewinski, 2015) Don’t look blank, happy, or sad: Patterns of facial expressions of speakers in banks’ YouTube videos predict video’s popularity over time Proposing that the popularity of YouTube videos on social media platforms could be predicted by nonverbal expressions (facial expressions). Face Reader version 6.0 Decreasing incidence of affiliative facial emotions (happiness and sadness) and increasing incidence of nonemotional expressions (surprise) explained up to 86% in the video’s popularity. In short, A simple and non-emotional nonverbal message is what viewers and potential customers (e.g., social media users) find most compelling. YouTube videos (Continued) Alsharif et al., Cogent Business & Management (2021), 8: 1978620 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 Page 21 of 26 Table 8. (Continued) Author & Year Title Major contribution Method (Device) Finding summary Limit of the Study Venkatraman, et al. (Venkatraman et al., 2015) Predicting Advertising Success Beyond Traditional Measures: New Insights from Neurophysiological Methods and Market Response Modeling To assess subjects’ responses to 30-second TV ads, and to relate individual-level response neurophysiological measures when participants viewed the ads. fMRI, EEG, ET, IAT, Selfreport, Biometrics (heart rate, breathing, SCR/EDR) The fMRI measures allows to explain the variance in TV advertising much better than traditional measures. TV Advertising Cascio, et al. (Cascio et al., 2015) Neural correlates of susceptibility to group opinions in online word-ofmouth recommendations To examine the relationship between social influence and recommendation decisions among teenagers in the new media environment fMRI Changes in recommendations as a result of peer recommendations have been increased activity in the striatum and the OFC. Recommendation decisions and social influence on adolescent decisions Chen, et al. (Y.-P. Chen et al., 2015) From “Where” to “What”: Distributed Representations of Brand Associations in the Human Brain Combining between machine learning tools with fMRI data to describe the relationship between brand personality and brain activity. fMRI It is possible to predict the brand that person is thinking of it based on the correlation between brand personality and brain activity. Brand personality SI-ERPs. Single-item ERPs; LPP. Late positive potential; PSW. Positive slow waves; S2S. Service to service; G2G. Goods to goods; N. Negative polarity; P. Positive polarity; EI. Emotional index; AW. Approach withdrawal; PSAs. Public service announcements; BPM. Beat per minute; PFC. Prefrontal cortex; WTP. Willingness to pay; OFC. Orbitofrontal cortex; RN. Returning and no; RI. Returning and if; OL. Occipital lobe. Alsharif et al., Cogent Business & Management (2021), 8: 1978620 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1978620 Page 22 of 26 Nevertheless, this study can be useful for future research trends as it gives previous studies of the research subject/problem. The authors would recommend that future research on NM has to use the fMRI tool to evaluate and predict the purchase processes and decision-making by determining the activity regions in the consumer’s brain; thereby, predicting the success or failure of the product or advertisements before put it in the real environment due to that it has an excellent spatial resolution, besides, can record the distal regions in the brain accurately unlike EEG. In addition, we suggest that scholars should focus on the contributions of NM research in other domains such as social sciences, politics. 7. Limitations of the study We tried to minimize the shortcoming in methodology, this study comes with a limitation that offers opportunities for future research. We focus on extracting the publications from the Scopus database that were published in the last five years. In addition, we extracted empirical papers that were published in the English language and employed NM tools and overlooked the books, chapter books, proceeding books, notes, reviews, conferences and the non-English language publications, thereby the current study is not fully bias-free. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Azman Hashim International Business School (AHIBS) and Taif University, Ranyah University College, Department of Financial and Administrative Sciences for supporting this study. Funding The authors received no direct funding for this research. Author details Ahmed H. 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