NESSHI The 'Neuro-turn' in European Social Sciences and Humanities: impacts of neurosciences on economics, marketing and philosophy
Type
fundamental research project
Start Date
01 June 2011
End Date
31 July 2015
Status
completed
Keywords
Social studies of neuroscience
science and technology studies
ethnography
consumer
Description
With Professor Steve Woolgar (Saïd Business School, University of Oxford) Tanja i explores the emergence and implications of ‘neuromarketing', i.e., a new form of consumer and market research that uses neuroscientific knowledge and technologies to understand consumer behaviour. She undertakes an empirical investigation of neuromarketing through ethnographic fieldwork, interviews and documentary analysis with the objective to examine how neuromarketing contributes to alternative conceptualisations of consumers and consumer behaviour. This ethnographic design is supplemented by a comparative historical overview of how different market research technologies have contributed to changing conceptualisations of the consumer and consumer behaviour over time.
This study is part of a three-year European wide Open Research Area (ORA) project co-funded by the ESRC UK, DFG Germany, NWO Netherlands and ANR France.
Leader contributor(s)
Woolgar, Steve
Member contributor(s)
Funder(s)
Topic(s)
Social studies of neuroscience
science and technology studies
socio-historical perspective on consumer conceptualisations
Method(s)
Ethnography
interviews
document analysis
Range
HSG Internal
Range (De)
HSG Intern
Principal
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), United Kingdom
Division(s)
Eprints ID
245136

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Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Publication
    Neuromarketing in the making: enactment and reflexive entanglement in an emerging field
    (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015-12-15)
    Schneider, Tanja
    ;
    Woolgar, Steve
    As the neurosciences make their way beyond the laboratory, they become influential in a wide range of domains. How to understand this process? What are the prospects for, and dynamics of, influence, uptake and rejection? This article reports our attempts to track the emergence of neurosciences with particular reference to the emergence of the field of neuromarketing. Our key initial tasks included the identification and definition of the field, the negotiation of access, and establishing relations with participants and informants. These tasks gave rise to what are often construed as familiar ‘methodological difficulties', such as how to define the field and what to make of the reactions and responses of those involved in neuromarketing. In this article we present some of our experiences of researching the empirical materials of neuromarketing to assess different responses to ‘methodological difficulties' in studying science and technologies in the making. We draw on analytic resources provided by Science and Technology Studies to address the challenge of studying emerging fields of science, practices and technologies. In particular, we draw on the concepts of multiplicity, performativity and practical ontology to argue that a particular approach to ‘methodological difficulties' can actually enrich our research objectives. We suggest that reflexivity be understood, not predominantly as a methodological corrective to the problems of detecting an antecedent object of research; but as revealing some of the ways in which neuromarketing is enacted.
    Type: journal article
    Journal: BioSocieties: An interdisciplinary journal for social studies of life sciences
    Volume: 10
    Issue: 4
    URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/105628
  • Publication
    Witness and silence in neuromarketing: managing the gap between science and its application
    ( 2018-09-06)
    Brenninkmeijer, Jonna
    ;
    Schneider, Tanja
    ;
    Woolgar, Steve
    Over the past decades commercial and academic market(ing) researchers have studied consumers through a range of different methods including surveys, focus groups or interviews. More recently, some have turned to the growing field of neuroscience to understand consumers. Neuromarketing employs brain imaging, scanning, or other brain measurement technologies to capture consumers’ (brain) responses to marketing stimuli, and to circumvent the ‘problem’ of relying on consumers’ self-reports. This paper presents findings of an ethnographic study of neuromarketing research practices in one neuromarketing consultancy. Our access to the minutiae of commerical neuromarketing research provides important insights into how neuromarketers silence the neuromarketing test-subject in their experiments and presentations, and how they introduce the brain as an unimpeachable witness. This enables us to conceptually reconsider the role of witnesses in the achievement of scientific credibility, as prominently discussed in Science and Technology Studies (STS). We demonstrate that actual and virtual witnesses play an important role in producing credibility in neuromarketing research but that secrets and silences can have important performative effects, too. Instead of considering silence and secrecy as an absence of witnesses, we demonstrate that silence can help produce credibility when it allows virtual witnesses to speak on behalf of actual witnesses
    Type: conference paper
    URL: https://www.conftool.com/unexplored-realities-2018/index.php?page=browseSessions&path=adminSessions&form_session=24
    URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/100053
  • Publication
    Witness and Silence in Neuromarketing: Managing the Gap between Science and Its Application
    ( 2020-01-01)
    Brenninkmeijer, Jonna
    ;
    Schneider, Tanja
    ;
    Woolgar, Steve
    Over the past decades commercial and academic market(ing) researchers have studied consumers through a range of different methods including surveys, focus groups, or interviews. More recently, some have turned to the growing field of neuroscience to understand consumers. Neuromarketing employs brain imaging, scanning, or other brain measurement technologies to capture consumers’ (brain) responses to marketing stimuli and to circumvent the “problem” of relying on consumers’ self-reports. This paper presents findings of an ethnographic study of neuromarketing research practices in one neuromarketing consultancy. Our access to the minutiae of commercial neuromarketing research provides important insights into how neuromarketers silence the neuromarketing test subject in their experiments and presentations and how they introduce the brain as an unimpeachable witness. This enables us conceptually to reconsider the role of witnesses in the achievement of scientific credibility, as prominently discussed in science and technology studies (STS). Specifically, we probe the role witnesses and silences play in establishing and maintaining credibility in and for “commercial research laboratories.” We propose three themes that have wider relevance for STS researchers and require further attention when studying newly emerging research fields and practices that straddle science and its commercial application.
    Type: journal article
    Journal: Science, Technology & Human Values
    Volume: 45
    Issue: 1
    URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0162243919829222
    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243919829222
    URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/112488