ETHICAL ASPECTS OF NEUROMARKETING Jana Durďáková
5 ETHICS IN NEUROMARKETING
Ethics can be generally described as a philosophical discipline, whose goal it is to find good, correct behavior. The term ethics comes from a Greek word “ethos”, which means custom, tradition or character. Ethics is also called practical philosophy, which occupies itself with morals, it studies human behavior and correct ways of life. And by that it arouses questions about the sense of human life. That means about the value ladder of an individual – about values that are crucial for him, those that he wants to reach (Lörincz, 2009).
The author also adds that ethics will most probably play the determinative role for maintenance of life on this planet, because most of the world’s problems, which endanger our lives, have an ethical character. If humans want to save the world, they have to give priority to ethical
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standpoints (as for example respecting some rules, economizing etc.) over human need to consume and own still more and more.
There are two main issues in the market area that are ethically evaluated negatively. The first issue bears on the effort to gain advantage because of rogue behavior. Unfortunately, this kind of behavior appears on the market very often. One example could be producers who intentionally produce labels whose name or image processing should cause mistaking with the successful brand, etc. In the other case the customer is under pressure, which leads to irrational behavior.
This ethical issue is more complicated compared to the previous one, because marketing in general and advertising in particular are criticized, since they instigate to meaningless consumption (Bárta and Bártová, 2012).
Ethics and privacy concerns are an often discussed topic in connection with neuromarketing.
According to Gatterer (in Kolar, 2014) people are afraid of manipulation and in times of advanced technology and applications that are used to obtain private information of people, they are worried about the risk of losing self-determination rights. Neuromarketing enables researchers to look into the human mind and provides possibilities to encode emotions and decision making processes that consumers would not voluntarily provide to others. To guarantee the ethical and lawful marketing and social research the world organizations ESOMAR (the European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research) and ICC (the International Chamber of Commerce) developed the international code which ensures that market researchers comply with all national and international laws, behave ethically and acting transparently.
Regarding the ethical issues and discussions on neuromarketing, human dignity should be the basis for ethical principles such as autonomy, self-determination, privacy, confidentiality, protection of vulnerable groups, reliability and honest interpretation of research in accordance with the risk of manipulation by commercial entities (Ulman, Cakar and Yildiz, 2014).
There is also the term “neuroethics“, which is associated with several disciplines, says Levy (2007). Ethics is associated with neuroscience most obviously, but also with psychology, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind.
Neuroethics focuses on what is good and what is bad, or what is right or wrong in relation to using neuroimaging tools in order to understand brain mechanisms. In the context of neuromarketing, neuroethics is devoted to the protection of human subjects participating in marketing experiments that use neuroimaging (Olteanu, 2014).
The following table (Tab. 1) shows the authors and some ethical problems occurring in neuromarketing.
Table 8 Selected ethical problems in neuromarketing. Source: Own compilation Ethical problems in neuromarketing
Murphy 2008 consumer free will
protection of consumer privacy
Wilson 2008 threat for free, logical and
informed decision-making of customers
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Rapp 2009 threat to the privacy of
respondents
Koukolík 2012 misuse of psychological and
neurological knowledge in marketing and politics
consumer susceptibility to behave like a “flock of sheep”
Bercea Olteanu 2014 consumer free will and
protection of consumer privacy
threat of mind reading and manipulation of the human mind
Neuromarketing awakens many ethical issues. However, Murphy et al. (2008) concentrates his arguments about ethics mainly on issues of the customers’ free will and of protection of his privacy. In the first case neuromarketing tries to find some “buy button” in the consumers’ brain.
The consumer would buy automatically after turning on this switch by marketing specialists.
If this ability of neuromarketing reaches a critical level of efficiency, it would mean a big threat for free, logical and informed decision-making of customers (Wilson et al., 2008).
Even bigger emphasis should be put on the privacy protection issues. Based on past experience it is known, that an information leak or trading with information can occur especially when this information is related to consumers preferences or when the information about consumers is known from advertisements or from the internet. Also providing data from neuroscientifical studies, which show that pathological findings in the brains of examined subjects occur in 1–2 % of cases, might be misused by some companies, such as insurance companies (Rapp et al., 2009).
Also Olteanu (2014) supports the view that consumer free will and privacy are the most discussed problems in neuroethics. Free will is related to moral responsibility, and people can take responsibility for their actions only if it is connected with free will. It is the consumer who should have the last word in purchasing a product.
Marketers want to learn more about the process of consumer choice-making and activation patterns that predict consumer behavior to better understand what consumers need and predict it in the future. Neuroimaging tools examine the social behavior of consumers using knowledge about the brain. This is also where the ethical problem lies. People fear that researchers will be able to read the minds of of the respondents, or will be able to manipulate the human mind. But the answer is that neither electroencephalography, nor functional magnetic resonance imaging are not able to read the minds of the respondents, or even manipulate their minds. Firms could reduce these concerns by being transparent in the research, such as notify the participants of the research, what is the purpose of the study and subsequently provide them information concerning the way they obtain the results. Another step to reduce concerns should be a certain caution of researches when analyzing the data collected from neuromarketing studies (Olteanu, 2014).
The application of neuromarketing balances nowadays on the edge of ethics. Koukolík warns about various ways of misusing psychological and neurological findings in politics and also in marketing and he points out the problem of natural inclination of human beings to behave like a
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“flock of sheep”. The above-mentioned behavior like a “flock of sheep” is according to Koukolík a human heritage from the past, when such behavior was understood as very beneficial for human cooperation. Cooperation is according to him a necessary condition for survival of small groups in the wild. The problem is, that mechanisms in the brain, which are connected to survival are useful just for a maximum of 150–200 people. The power of crowd can be according to him easily misused. If the “sheep” behavior leads the group to extinction, there should be at least one contra-sheep that tells the others “Do not do it” (Česká televize, c1996–2015).
On the other hand, Lee, Broderic a Chamberlain (2006) say that they see no reason why marketing research could not benefit from neuroimaging. Neuromarketing should be regarded as a legitimate and important field for future research that will allow marketers to better understand human behavior. Application of neuroimaging to marketing research should lead to not only a clearer understanding of the impact of marketing techniques, but also insight into the key issues in business relationships that have so far been difficult to capture.
Neuromarketing itself stands on scientific basis. Hlásek (in Vesecký, 2014) states that “every technology has to deal with ethical issues. Even when holding a stone or a twig in our hand, it is a matter of ethics, what we do with them. Neromarketing does not influence directly decision-making of human beings, it is used mainly for understanding human behavior in various situations, for there is a difference in how we feel and we think we feel and how we tell others about how we feel. Neuromarketing is no exception.”
6 CONCLUSION
Traditional market research is based on available information which respondents knowingly provide for marketers. The problem of these studies is that respondents often do not answer the questions truthfully, and this leads to distortion of information. Neuromarketing as a new discipline of marketing communication uses neuroscientifical methods to understand of consumer behavior. The main goal of neuromarketing is to determine how and why consumers decide and which part of the brain affects this decision. Neuromarketing is based on the fact that most human activities and part of the thinking (also including emotions) are made subconsciously. In order for these knowledge to be used in the process of consumer purchase behavior, or in another area of marketing, marketers use different methods to identify customer´s needs and desires. The main methods of neuromarketing include “neuroimaging methods”, which are EEG (electroencephalography) measuring brain activity, fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) operating on the basis of the magnetic signal and using for brain mapping, GSR (galvanic skin response) recording activity on the skin surface, FA (method of coding face of respondent) or eye tracking (method of mapping eye contact of respondent). Other methods are MEG (magnetic encephalography), NIR (near infrared spectroscopy), and PET (positron emission tomography). The use of these neuromarketing methods can provide for marketers deeper understanding of consumer behavior. These findings gained from neuromarketing research can eliminate the above-mentioned distortion emerging in the traditional research due to conscious behavior of customers.
However, with the use of neuromarketing it is also necessary to consider the possible risks of misuse of brain knowledge and point to ethical issues in this area. Many critics warn of the problems concerning free will of consumers and protection of privacy. Their concerns are based on the assumption that marketers try to find “buy button” in the brain of consumer. The
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consumer would buy automatically after turning on this switch by marketers. What is more, potential misuse of privacy is nowadays multiplied by developing the Internet and use social networks. The issue of misuse of psychological and neurological knowledge in marketing and politics and the threat of mind reading and manipulation of the human mind are a result of technological development of our time. But these concerns are excessive because current methods of neuromarketing are not able to read minds or to manipulate the human mind of consumer. To eliminate these concerns should companies approach the research transparently and subsequently provide for consumers result of research and way they were achieved.
From the perspective of ethics is necessary to think about these issues and eliminate any concerns that arise from the use of neuromarketing. But on the other hand, the utility of this field, that by using its methods detects the wishes and needs of consumers, and thus contributes to their greater satisfaction, should be emphasized. Despite the negative opinions and ethical concerns neuromarketing is considered beneficial marketing communication tool and it is only a matter of time to show whether neuromarketing methods actually contribute to effective focus on consumers.
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Contact information Ing. Jana Durďáková
Tomas Bata University in Zlín
Faculty of Management and Economics Mostní 5139
760 01 Zlín +420 576 032 120 durdakova@fame.utb.cz
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