Until now, economic theory has not systematically integrated the impact of emotions
on brand perception. Evidence from the evolving discipline of neuroscience suggests
that decision-making is dependent on emotional processing. Interdisciplinary research
under the label of "neuromarketing" arose. The key idea of this approach is to employ
recent neuroscientific methods in order to analyze economically relevant brain
processes. This thesis offers an overview of the current state of neuroeconomic
research by defining the concept of neuromarketing, explaining methods that are
widely used and describing current studies in this new research area. The study which
was conducted within this master thesis finally provides guidance for future research.
Several studies found that there are no separated ways for cognition and emotion in a
human being's brain. Emotions are deeply connected with cognitive processing and
thus, even are a crucial part of human decision making.
Since more and more companies want to enhance their brands, products, and services
with emotions, they are trying to use this important precondition and are engaging in
sports sponsorships, because sports as such is considered the biggest and most
emotional power in entertainment business.
Several authors claim that in addition there has rarely been coherent research for
sponsorship in general - and if at all, then only regarding the awareness of the
sponsoring brands. Also, companies are not really aware if they seize the high potential
of their sponsorship activities. About 21% of companies that apply sponsorship
strategies into practice do not even conduct a controlling phase. They are not
measuring the achievement of their sponsorship objectives. Hence, they do not even
know the success (or failure) of their strategies. Does sponsorship in sports have
significant effects at all? Does it help to increase a brand's image?
Only explicit measuring is very common in controlling the effects of sponsorship
activities. The probands are being asked whether they remember one brand or another
and how they rate it. Too often, however, the results are biased by many wrong preconditions, for example the Social Desirability Bias or that the sponsors only want
to hear what they want to hear.[...]