Brain Effective Connectivity Comparison in the Four States of Confrontation to the Brands During Shopping

Neuromarketing assists us to uncover the subconscious effects of marketing stimuli on consumers' brains from a neuroscientific perspective. One of the important effects of brands on humans’ brains is in the level of directed relations between brain areas which was less considered in neuromarketing studies. In this paper, we used the EEG signals recorded during the confrontation of participants to the brands in the virtual shopping center. 20 participants (10 female and 10 men) were contributed to the experiment. After preprocessing, extracted brain sources were clustered to brain areas. Effective connectivity between brain areas was calculated using the generalized partial coherence (GPDC) index in four different states of watching brands (1. unfamiliar and undesired brands 2. familiar and undesired brands 3. unfamiliar and desired brand 4. desired and familiar brands). Statistical analysis of these states showed in watching familiar brands almost all of the brain areas have a stronger relation to each other. In watching unfamiliar brands, between hemispheric relations are stronger when brands are desired, and interhemispheric relations are stronger when brands are not desired. Also, in watching familiar brands, left-brain relations are stronger when the brands are desired and right-brain relations are stronger when the brands are undesired. As the brands were shown for 2 seconds, the connectivity values in 1st second and 2nd second of watching brands don’t have significant differences.