Improving Preference Prediction Using EEG & Machine Learning

Understanding how consumers will react to advertising and how it drives their preferences is critical to marketers. Achieving better accuracy predictions and expanding the tools at our disposal is critical for continued success. Traditionally surveys and focus groups are the go-to tools for market research. Recently companies touting neuromarketing have proliferated, but it’s hard for marketers to evaluate the claims and value these offerings.

Today we’re speaking with Dino Levy, an associate professor and the head of the Neuroeconomics and Neuromarketing lab at the Marketing Department at Coller School of Management and the Sagol School of Neuroscience. Our conversation explores research he’s conducted into how neuroscience and machine learning can be combined with traditional research tools in order to improve our ability to predict consumer preferences.

Topics include:

• The shortcomings inherent in surveys and focus groups.
• Why it is useful to measure more than one EEG signal.
• How their approach allowed them to test the accuracy of their predictive results.
• Why it’s useful to measure consumers’ unconscious reactions to marketing stimuli.
• Why it’s impossible to sell to a consumers “reptilian” brain.
• Why marketing by tapping into emotion matters, but it isn’t the only thing that matters.
• The red flags you should look out for when evaluating a neuromarketing firm.

click here to read the research article 

The Up Next podcast’s access to this content is courtesy of the International Journal of Research in Marketing, an international, double-blind peer-reviewed journal for marketing academics and practitioners. IJRM aims to contribute to the marketing discipline by providing high-quality, original research which advances marketing knowledge and techniques. As marketers increasingly draw on diverse and sophisticated methods, IJRM‘s target audience is comprised of marketing scholars, practitioners (e.g., marketing research and consulting professionals) and policymakers.

IJRM  aims to be at the forefront of the marketing field with a particular emphasis on bringing timely ideas to market. The journal embraces innovative research with the potential to spur future research and influence practice. Hence, it welcomes contributions in various aspects of marketing. The editors, while accepting a wide array of scholarly contributions from different disciplinary approaches, especially encourage research that is novel, visionary or path breaking.

Dino J. Levy (interviewed guest) is an associate professor at the Marketing Department at Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University  and the head of the Neuroeconomics and Neuromarketing lab. I am also a member of the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel-Aviv University and a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Decision Making at NYU. In my lab we are trying to understand consumer decision-making and various aspects of value representation in the brain. Specifically, we are exploring the effects of basic visual attributes on decision-making and on neural representations of value. We also examine the neural mechanisms of irrational behavior. Finally, we are trying to predict consumer’s future preferences using neural and physiological measurements above and beyond the accuracy of behavioral measurements.

Adam Hakim (corresponding author) is a direct PhD student at Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University. He started my M.A at Oded Rechavi’s lab, developing image processing software that applied machine learning techniques (WorMachine, published).    A year into his M.A, he switched to the direct PhD Program at Dr. Levy’s Lab, where he now explores various types of data (EEG, Neurophysiology, Eye Tracking, Mouse Tracking, self-reports) and models (Deep & Machine Learning) to predict individual and population preferences.

Additional co-authors:

• Shira Klorfeld
• Tal Sela
• Doron Friedman
• Maytal Shabat-Simon

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Dino J. Levy (interviewee)

• LinkedIn
• Neuroeconmics & Neuromarketing Lab web page 
• Google Scholar 

Adam Hakim (corresponding author)

• LinkedIn 
• Neuroeconmics & Neuromarketing Lab web page 
• Google Scholar 

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