Neuromarketing: Where Things Stand Today Origins, State of the Art and Perspectives

Many of the processes that determine economic relationships are emotional rather than cognitive and refer directly to motivation. In fact, all elements attributable to cognition are mediated, influenced or activated by emotions; from a neuroscientific point of view, emotions are indeed a form of cognition, making the traditional distinction obsolete. The principles that guide our decisions are largely at odds with the standard economic concept of behavior, so much so that they discredit the very basis of the classical mathematical models adopted by traditional economic science. In this discussion, we will review some of the extensive literature on the absolutely topical subject of neuromarketing: from the theories on the concept of persuasion, to the fundamental discoveries on the role of emotions in our choice processes, to the contemporary knowledge on the functioning of the human brain and the tools that technology makes available to us to probe its possibilities.