Discovery of a product’s unconscious culture code and testing with fMRI

Introduction In the quest to investigate the internal cognitive mechanisms underlying consumer behavior, often metaphorically termed the “black box,” studies indicate that purchasing decisions are significantly influenced by implicit cognitive processes. Conventional data collection methods that appeal to the conscious level may mislead marketing strategies. This motivates the rapid increase of research in two fields: psychology and neuroscience. This interdisciplinary research was focused on the cultural unconscious. Similar to the archetypes (the building blocks of the collective unconscious), cultural codes (the building blocks of the cultural unconscious) play a crucial role in shaping purchasing decisions. Based on this, the research question is “What is the cultural code of the selected product in the social unconscious of the target population?” Methods This research comprises two consecutive sub-studies: in-depth interviews (Study 1), and an fMRI task (Study 2). A heavy-duty vehicle (truck) was chosen as the product, and professional truck drivers ( n = 22 for Study 1 and n = 34 for Study 2) from Nortwest Anatolia, in Türkiye, were selected to represent the target population. Results In Study 1, the unconscious cultural code associated with the truck was discovered as “migration” through in-depth interviews utilizing psychoanalytic and transactional approaches. In Study 2, an fMRI experiment was developed to test whether the “truck + migration” image would elicit brain activation patterns similar to those associated with unconscious relational encoding and retrieval, reported in the literature (fusiform gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, parahippocampus / hippocampus, precuneus, angular gyrus, anterior cingulate), and significantly different from those elicited by control images. Detecting these specific activations would provide neuroscientific support for the hypothesis that the concepts of truck and migration are relationally encoded in participants’ cultural unconscious, thereby validating the qualitative findings by in-depth interviews. Discussion Identifying a product’s unconscious cultural code enables a more precise design of the marketing mix. By using these interdisciplinary qualitative and quantitative methods sequentially, an innovative and original method was developed, yielding both theoretical contributions in cultural code discovery and consumer neuroscience, as well as practical implications, particularly in marketing.