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The brain has a buy button. So say the scientists. Using fMRI, certain areas of the brain are activated in conjunction with buying decisions. fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) is a brain scanning device which tracks blood flow as people perform mental tasks. Specific regions light up like Christmas trees, showing increased blood flow when they recognize a face, hear a song, make a decision, perceive a reward, pay attention or sense deception. Neuromarketing and neuroeconomics rely on these findings to predict consumer behavior.

The Brain Loves A Good Buy

A recent study by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University and the MIT Sloan School of Management, published in Neuron, showed the nucleus accumbens, an area of the brain associated with the anticipation of pleasure, was activated when subjects saw products they would buy. When confronted with products priced too high, the brain region known as the insula was activated and a part of the brain associated with balancing gains versus losses — the mesial prefrontal cortex — was deactivated. You got that?

Immediate Pleasure v. Immediate Pain

Buying seems to involve a balancing between immediate gain and immediate pain. This goes against conventional wisdom.

This study challenges the conventional economic account of consumer purchases, which views consumers as deciding between the immediate pleasure of making a purchase and the delayed pleasures of alternative things for which the same money could be used. The results of this paper support an alternative perspective that views consumers as trading off the immediate pleasure of making a purchase against an immediate pain: the pain of forking out the money for the item. The results can explain the growing tendency of consumers to overspend when purchasing items with credit cards instead of cash, because consumers do not immediately pay for items charged to credit cards and the “pain” of the potential loss is minimized.

Can these findings help real estate agents?
Note: In the course of studying brain activity in the subjects, scientists stumbled upon some surprising differences between male and female brains

Male brain

Female brain

Sources Serious:

Researchers use brain scans to predict when people will buy products (EureAlert.org via Carneige Mellon University)
Neural Predictors of Purchases (Neuron, 1/4/07) by Scott Rick and George Loewenstein of the Department of Social and Decisions Sciences at Carnegie Mellon; Brian Knutson and G. Elliott Wimmer of the Department of Psychology at Stanford; and Drazen Prelec at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Sources Silly: Google Images

Further Reading:

If Your Brain has a “buy button”, what pushes it? (NY Times, 10/19/04): In the famous Coke-Pepsi study (financed by the National Institute of Drug Abuse) some people did not choose a drink based on taste alone. When told they were drinking “the real thing”, it triggered their medial prefrontal cortex and memory region, the hippocampus, suggesting they chose based on the strong brand identity of Coca-Cola. Makes you think.
Nueromarketing, Is There a Buy Button in the Brain?, by Patrick Renvoise and Christophe Morin.

Related Post:

Scent Marketing: Leading Consumers by the Nose.

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