Innovision Spring 2020

14 | INNOVISION MAGAZINE NEUROMARKETING RESEARCH Define neuromarketing. Neuromarketing is a new field of marketing which applies neuropsychology to marketing research. It is one of the most rapidly growing subfields of neuroscience in which brain and biometric technologies are used. Why do research on neuromarketing? By using technologies, it allows researchers tomore accurately measure individual’s physiological responses to marketing stimuli. It helps to further understand consumer behavior by gaining insight at the subconscious level. It is expected that such knowledge will assist marketers in creating products and services designed more effectively and marketing campaigns focused more on the brain’s response. What made you want to collaborate with each other? Neuromarketing itself is an interdisciplinary approach which combines technologies and perspectives from various disciplines. Bringing in diverse but complementary perspectives that each of us could offer, we were confident that our collaborative work would lead to greater creativity, productivity and yield new insights. We are looking forward to this new adventure ahead of us! How long have you been researching neuromarketing? In 2011, KU Sport Business Institute (KUSBI) was established with a mission to serve sport industry entities that are in need of consulting and research services, while allowing Sport Management students to apply current sport management theories and practices and to conduct research in the context of real-world experiences. As a means to continue to support KUSBI’s mission, over the years KUSBI has pursued multiple grants to become known for being and equipped with Neuromarketing capabilities. Since 2015, Dr. Yongjae Kim has been conducting neuromarketing research on sponsorship effectiveness and media behaviors. In the research field, he has been invited to deliver several presentations and collaborate with other universities such as University of Akron, Mississippi State University and German Sport University. In addition, he has been successful in getting grant funding for his research, from both internal and external sources. In particular, he received the Janet Park Research Grant at the 2017 NASSM conference and the 2017 PASSHE FPDC Annual Grant for neuromarketing research. Most recently, Drs. Soojin Kim and Eun Kang have taken on leadership roles to make possible neuromarketing capabilities at KU.They play an important role in creating a culture of interdisciplinary research and offering advanced career and learning opportunities for students at KU. It is expected that KUSBI with the biometric technology tools will be a regional center of neuromarketing research providing opportunities for advanced scientific research and experiential learning at KU. We aim to develop learning programs for faculty and students, focusing on biometric technology (i.e., eye-tracking, facial expression, skin response/heart rate testing). KUSBI plans to continue to seek internal and external grants to maximize the potential to be a leader in innovative neuroscience research and learning at the regional and state level. In the next five years, it is expected that KUSBI will be expanding its research area to brain and behavioral research using electroencephalography (EEG) through research consortium with several institutes and companies. What is the end goal for the research? Get published? Go to a conference? Given the interdisciplinary nature of the neuroscience field, it is believed that neuromarketing capabilities will benefit KU faculty members as it will be conducive in creating a culture of interdisciplinary scholarship at Kutztown. It is also intended to directly benefit our students. Students will be given the opportunity to engage in and be trained to design new research studies about biometric technology tools used for data collection, which will lead to developing strong foundational training in the emerging knowledge of neuroscience. Can you explain the gist of your research? In various contexts, we will be applying the advanced research techniques - facial expression and eye-tracking analysis in an attempt to provide more comprehensive insights into consumers’ physiological and physiological reactions to a marketing practice. Although extant research has investigated the consumers’ responses, it has mainly focused on the initial level of consumer’s explicit responses and widely utilized self-report measures. We expect that using neurotechnology will lead us to the next level in detecting subtle and neutral consumer responses. DR. EUAN KANG Business Administration DR. YONGJAE KIM Sport Management & Leadership Studies DR. SOOJIN KIM Sport Management & Leadership Studies