Schaefer Michael, Rumpel Franziska, Sadrieh Abdolkarim, Reimann Martin, Denke Claudia
Department of Neurology, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg Magdeburg, Germany.
Department of Marketing, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg Magdeburg, Germany.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2015 Mar 26;9:144. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00144. eCollection 2015.
Numerous studies explore consumer perception of brands in a more or less passive way. This may still be representative for many situations or decisions we make each day. Nevertheless, sometimes we often actively search for and use information to make informed and reasoned choices, thus implying a rational and thinking consumer. Researchers suggested describing this distinction as low relative to high involvement consumer behavior. Although the involvement concept has been widely used to explain consumer behavior, behavioral and neural correlates of this concept are poorly understood. The current study aims to describe a behavioral measure that is associated with high involvement, the length of search behavior. A second aim of this study was to explore brain activations associated with involvement by employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We presented participants information cues for different products and told them that they had to answer questions with respect to these products at the end of the experiment. Participants were free to stop the information search if they think they gathered enough information or to continue with collecting information. Behavioral results confirmed our hypothesis of a relationship between searching behavior and personal involvement by demonstrating that the length of search correlated significantly with the degree of personal involvement of the participants. fMRI data revealed that personal involvement was associated with activation in BA44. Since this brain region is known to be involved in semantic memory, the results of this pilot study suggest that high involvement consumer behavior may be linked to cognitive load and attention towards a product.
众多研究或多或少以一种被动的方式探究消费者对品牌的认知。这可能仍能代表我们每天做出的许多情境或决策。然而，有时我们经常积极地搜索和使用信息，以便做出明智且合理的选择，这意味着存在一个理性且会思考的消费者。研究人员建议将这种区别描述为低参与度与高参与度消费者行为。尽管参与度概念已被广泛用于解释消费者行为，但该概念的行为和神经关联却鲜为人知。当前的研究旨在描述一种与高参与度相关的行为测量方法，即搜索行为的时长。本研究的第二个目的是通过使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）来探究与参与度相关的大脑激活情况。我们向参与者展示不同产品的信息线索，并告知他们在实验结束时必须回答有关这些产品的问题。如果参与者认为自己已收集到足够的信息，他们可以自由停止信息搜索，也可以继续收集信息。行为结果通过表明搜索时长与参与者的个人参与度程度显著相关，证实了我们关于搜索行为与个人参与度之间关系的假设。fMRI数据显示，个人参与度与BA44区域的激活有关。由于已知该脑区参与语义记忆，这项初步研究的结果表明，高参与度消费者行为可能与对产品的认知负荷和注意力有关。
