Neuromarketing: Mere Bundles of Mental States?
Hsu M. Peer Sphere: The CMO Council Journal, 2012.Introduction
During the dawn of the 20th century, Hugo Muensterberg, the great pioneer of industrial/organizational psychology, purportedly said, “Businessmen will eventually realize that customers are merely bundles of mental states and that the mind is a mechanism that we can affect with the same exactitude with which we control a machine in a factory.” Despite such optimism, Muensterberg made little progress on understanding these “mere bundles of mental states,” much less controlling them as one would a machine. In the 100 years since, every generation of researchers has presumed that the newest theories and technologies of the time held the promise of unlocking the black box that is the mind of the consumer— first surveys and focus groups from psychology, then decision sciences, and now neuroscience. At each level, we move away from what people say they will do, to what they do, to what they will do.