Is Neuromarketing Ethical? Does it Invade Consumer's Privacy?

This article from the American Marketing Association, titled “What are the Ethics of Neuromarketing?” written by Hal Conick discusses the many assumptions about neuromarketing, the ethical questions that come along with it, and ways to ensure that users are put first rather than the profit of the company. Sometimes neuromarketing raises heads because it takes measurements of the human body that are pretty much impossible to control. Neuromarketing uses tools such as EEGs, fMRIs, and Biometrics (eye movement detectors or skin conductance detectors), to determine how consumers are reacting to advertisements, marketing campaigns, and products in general. The misconception is that neuromarketing will use this info to take advantage of the consumer and trick them into buying certain products or services when they truly don’t want to. The article includes an interview with Roger Dooley, an expert in the field. To this misconception he responded with the fact that neuromarketing is not unethical as long as the companies using it are not trying to deceive the consumers viewing their campaigns. I really appreciated how Dooley discussed the use of rationality when it comes to consumers purchasing habits, as some believe that neuromarketing will lead to irrational decisions. He debunked this idea by explaining the fact that as consumers we’re most often not rational decision makers - if we were, luxury, designer, and high end brands would be out of business. So, with this in mind, it should be noted that neuromarketing doesn’t affect rational decision making anymore than our own emotional and personal needs and wants.

Many consumers have raised questions about privacy and their overall online identity, some worry that through these physiological tests used in neuromarketing companies might hold too much information about them. Personally, I can absolutely see the concern with this, we have already learned that there is a lot of information about each of us individually out there that we might have no clue is out there. Through our smart phones, online searches, and overall digital interests, many of our individual preferences are out in the world. It is noted in the article that unless there is also a questionnaire of some sort (asking likes/dislikes, preferences, interests, etc.) involved in the research study (something that must be consented for), researchers aren’t really able to determine that much about you personally just through brain imaging or heart rate monitoring. Dooley notes that in order to not invade the privacy of consumers, the company must be using this information for ethical reasons only, and should, if they’re a good/solid company, always have the consumers data and the consumers desires at the top of their list, rather than other ways that consumers data can be used for. There are many ethical questions when it comes to this kind of research, specifically the idea that even though we have the technology to do these types of studies is it really ethical to do so? Though there are obviously many different parts to this, overall I think if the information is used to the consumers benefit, it can be both useful and ethical.

If people aren’t willing to be used in neuromarketing studies because they are worried that their data is not protected, than the industry of neuromarketing is definitely at risk as there won’t be any consumer data from these tests to create specialized marketing and advertising campaigns. In addition to that, if people continue to have misconceptions of what neuromarketing is and what affects it can really have on a consumer, there will not be a large demand for it and it won’t be put to good use in the marketing world. Overall, I think neuromarketing is still not very wide spread or widely known, but if companies continue to succeed ethically while using it, I think it could be very useful to the future of marketing.

Article referenced above: https://www.ama.org/marketing-news/what-are-the-ethics-of-neuromarketing/