Open Access

Gerd NuferORCiD

• Neuromarketing is already relatively advanced when it comes to researching the principle effect of marketing in the brain. What is often still missing, however, is the transfer of these findings into practice. The reason for this is that research has so far primarily pursued the question of „why?“. For practice, however, the question of „how?“ is much more relevant. This article attempts to answer the latter question, i.e. to bridge the gap between research and practice in the field of retail marketing. Is there a buy button in the consumer´s brain? And if so, how can it be activated? Neuromarketing is a young discipline at the interface of cognitive science, neuroscience and market research. Due to technological progress, neuromarketing can provide important insights for retail, especially insights to explain consumer behaviour. By looking into the customer’s brain, retail companies can address their customers in a more targeted manner and thus gain an advantage over competitors. Especially the influence of emotions and the unconscious play a major role in the purchase decision of consumers. Using the limbic map, customers can be clustered into types based on the characteristics of their emotional systems, for which specific marketing measures can be derived. Best-practice examples from the retail sector show that a targeted approach to specific shopping types in retail can lead to success.