• Fast Company, Wednesday, September 16, 2009 10:39 AM

Kevin Randall, who is director of brand strategy and research at Movéo Integrated Branding, does a tidy job of summing up the state of neuromarketing research -- "the practice of using technology to measure brain activity in consumer subjects in order to inform the development of products and communications" -- in his blog. In other words, neuromarketing research presumably removes the subjectivity and ambiguity of other forms of market research such as focus groups.

While acknowledging that there's a bit of a "wild west" aura around the young field, he suggests that Nielsen's investment in NeuroFocus brings additional credibility to the discipline. He lists the major techniques being used -- fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging); SST (Steady State Topography); EEG (Electroencephalography); Eye Tracking and Galvanic Skin Response -- and gives summaries of ongoing projects at Microsoft, Frito-Lay, Google, Daimler and the Weather Channel.

Randall concludes by recounting three of the faults that critics often find with neuromarketing research, not the least of which being that it "still suffers from the issue it is trying to overcome: the artificiality of market research."

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