Abstract:

Neuromarketing is not a traditional discipline in Business Education, but rather a mix of disciplines involving technology, psychology, business administration, and social sciences in general. Moreover, neuromarketing is an essential topic in the current technological world and it has experienced a rapid growth, which revolves around precursor techniques, instrumentation and equipment, theoretical modelling and the design and integration of devices and systems.

However, neuromarketing is a technical and a social discipline at the same time. That is, technology can make neuromarketing appealing to students by enhancing the attractiveness of marketing curricula, but the social aspects can frequently be taken for granted. Several studies have demonstrated the significance of social and technological relationships in many different ways.

In laboratory activity, neuromarketing courses using a laboratory platform enhance interest and provide sufficient knowledge to students. Such courses help students to understand neuromarketing concepts and the application of models and instruments, but previous studies provide evidence that marketers coordinate other people to deliver the services and products for which they are ultimately responsible. Therefore, it is very important to understand neuromarketing as a social discipline in which people interact to create a product and service delivery company, for example.

Teaching of neuromarketing to students in business administration and marketing can make use of simulation-based educational laboratories, but users of simulation have argued that neuromarketing experiments are limited, delicate, and very expensive to set up and maintain. This paper proposes a methodology to develop a neuromarketing project into a laboratory activity. This methodology provides an excellent way of learning to look at the opportunities that arise when various fields of science, social sciences, and technology converge.

This paper describes a course with technology to boost the specific skills of students and to better teach advanced topics in neuromarketing and examines the impact of the proposed methodology. Individual data analysis and student survey results show that this academic experience was mainly used as a tool to prepare students to solve problems and design experiments, and an efficient teaching and learning approach was introduced in order to examine the impact of the methodology which was implemented.

This paper is organized as follows. The outline of the neuromarketing course is introduced in Section 1. The experimental methodology is described in Section 2, and the results used to measure the impact of this project-based learning strategy are presented in Section 3. Finally, concluding and relevant insights, limitations, and implications for future research are proposed in this manuscript.

Keywords:

Learning, laboratory activity, neuromarketing, virtual university, Spain.