Inside The Mind Of The Consumer Reading Answer Passage

 A.

 Marketing professionals are no longer willing to believe you when you say you prefer one product over another. To determine which one you actually prefer, they want to scan your brain. They are attempting to understand more about the thought processes underlying purchase decisions by utilising the techniques of neuroscientists, like electroencephalogram (EEG) mapping, as well as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Neuromarketing is the inevitable name given to the ensuing confluence of neuroscience and marketing.

 B.

Gerry Zaltman of Harvard University was the first to use brain imaging technologies in this manner in the late 1990s. The concept was unknown until 2001, when Atlanta, Georgia-based marketing firm BrightHouse established BrightHouse Neurostrategies Group, a division specifically devoted to neuromarketing. (Among BrightHouse's clients are Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, and Home Depot.) The firm name, though, might just be a cunning marketing ploy in and of itself. Instead of using MRIs to scan people when they are shown specific products or campaign ideas, BrightHouse instead relies its work on more extensive study into consumer preferences as well as decision-making conducted at Emory University in Atlanta.

 C.

Can marketing actually benefit from brain scanning technology? The fundamental idea is quite similar to focus groups and other conventional methods of market research. While lying in the fMRI machine, a volunteer is shown pictures or videos. Instead of using an interview or questionnaire, brain activity monitoring is used to assess the subject's reaction. f MRI offers real-time views of brain activity, with various regions "lighting up" in accordance with the amount of blood flow. This gives hints about the subject's automatic cognitive processes. For instance, neuroscientists are aware that the medial prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain, is connected to the sense of oneself. When the subject is gazing at a specific logo, blood flow to that location may indicate that the person identifies with the brands.

 D.

 At first, it appeared that only businesses in Europe were willing to acknowledge using neuromarketing. In 2003, two automakers, the European division of Ford and DaimlerChrysler in Germany, conducted pilot projects. Yet, US businesses have recently been more transparent regarding their utilisation of neuromarketing. The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Lieberman Research Worldwide, a marketing company based in Los Angeles, are working together to make it possible for movie studios to market-test movie trailers. More contentiously, the New York Times recently revealed that FKF Research, a political consultancy, has been researching the efficacy of campaign advertisements using neuromarketing strategies.

 E.

It's unclear whether all of this amounts to much more than a contemporary application of phrenology, the Victorian fascination with correlating skull bumps and lumps with personality traits. Because there hasn't been any extensive research, scans of a small number of people might not be a trustworthy indicator of consumer behaviour as a whole. Of course, focus groups and surveys have flaws as well: people are untruthful in the case of thought pollsters, and strong personalities can influence focus group results. Yet even honest people occasionally struggle to articulate their desires.

 F.

Perhaps therein lies the greatest promise for neuromarketing. Most people who are asked about cola drinks say they have a favourite brand, but they are unable to explain why they like the flavour of that brand better. an unpublished investigation into opinions of two well-known cola beverages. Brand A and Brand 13 were the two brands tested in the study, which indicated that more participants preferred Brand B in a blind tasting. fMRI scans revealed that drinking Brand B significantly brightened the ventral putamen, one of the brain's "reward centres," compared to Brand A. However, when asked which drink they liked, most participants answered Brand A, suggesting that its stronger brand trumps the other beverage's more agreeable taste.

G. 

"People acquire many unconscious views that are definitely beyond typical methods that exploit introspection," says Steven Quartz, a neurologist at Caltech who is partnering with Lieberman Research. Any company that can more precisely analyse how consumers react to products, brands, and advertising may make a fortune, given that over $100 billion is spent annually on marketing in the United States alone.

 H.

Pro-consumer groups are cautious. Gary Ruskin of the lobbying organisation Commercial Alert believes that current marketing strategies are effective enough. Marketing is already "deeply implicated in many significant pathologies," according to him. "This is especially true for children, who are experiencing an epidemic of illnesses linked to marketing, such as type 2 diabetes and obesity. A way to enhance these tendencies is neuromarketing.

 I.

 Dr. Quartz disagrees, arguing that neuromarketing strategies might also be applied for good. There are ways to use these tools, he believes, to produce more ethical advertising. Brain imaging might be utilised, for instance, to ascertain when people are capable of making free decisions in order to make sure that advertising stays within certain parameters.

 J.

Concerns about privacy invasion and unauthorised use of data about certain people's preferences are also raised by brain-scanning technology. Yet, since volunteer individuals make only a minor portion of neuromarketing studies, that appears improbable. The use of medical equipment for non-medical, recreational activities is often criticised. Nevertheless, Tim Ambler, a neuromarketing researcher at the London Business School, argues that "a tool is a tool" and that "everyone wins" if the instrument's owner receives a fair wage for renting it out. Perhaps more brain imaging will someday clarify why some people find neuromarketing appealing while others do not.

The Accidental Rainforest

A. 

When a Swedish priest, Peter Osbeck, returned from China in 1752, she stopped at the island of Ascension in the mid-Atlantic and defined it as "a heap of ruinous rocks" with a white mountain in the centre. It had only a few dozen plant species, the majority of which were ferns and some of which were unique to the island. 

B.

 Thus, it could have remained. Joseph Hooker, a British botanical collector, made a brief visit in 1843 on his return from Antarctica. He concluded after surveying the bare earth that the island had suffered some natural calamity that had deprived its vegetation and caused a precipitation decline that was converting the area into a desert. The British Navy, which maintained a garrison on the island at the time, wanted to improve the area and requested Hooker's counsel. He recommended an ambitious plan to plant trees and vegetation that would stimulate greater ecological recovery and increase rainfall. And, perhaps lacking anything else to do, they set sail with resolve.

C. 

A naval transport ship from Argentina delivered a batch of seedlings in 1845. In the next years, more than 200 plant species arrived from South Africa; 700 packets of seeds came from England, including some bamboo and prickly pear seeds that thrived in the region. By the early twentieth century, the mountain's alignments were covered with a variety of trees and plants from all over the world thanks to the efforts of seafarers who planted several thousand trees a year, giving rise to the mountain's new moniker, Green Mountain.

D. 

Ecologists of modern times shake their heads in dismay at what they see as Hookers' environmental chaos. The exotic species ruined the native ecosystem, leading the island's endemic vegetation to become defunct. In fact, Hooker was well aware of what could occur. However, he saw greater benefit in enhancing rainfall and encouraging the island's vegetation growth.

E. 

However, there is a much more underlying issue at hand than the relative advantages of rare endemic species versus numerous imported ones. Furthermore, as UK ecologist David Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University observed after an earlier visit to the island, it challenges fundamental ecological tenets. The conservationists' understandable concern for the survival of Ascension's scattering of different species has, according to him, blinded them to something quite astonishing: the success of the introduced species.

F. 

According to Wilkinson, today’s Green Mountain is ‘a fully functioning man-made tropical cloud forest’ that grew from a collection of species collected more or less at random from all over the globe. However, how could this have occurred? Complex ecosystems like cloud forests are created through evolutionary processes in which each organism develops in concert with others to occupy specific niches, conventional ecological theory says. Plants and their pollinators and seed dispersers experience eo-evolution, while microbes in the soil evolve to cope with leaf material.

G. 

However, this did not occur on Green Mountain. Moreover, the evidence suggests that natural rainforests are likely developed through a coincidence rather than evolution. According to some ecologists, species do not so much evolve in order to create ecosystems as they do make the most of what they have. According to Wilkinson, ‘The Green Mountain system is a built system that created a tropical rainforest without coevolution among its constituent species.’

H. 

Not everyone approves. An ecologist at the University of Edinburgh in the UK, Alan Gray, claims that the few surviving endemic species on Green Mountain might continue to act as the foundation of the new ecosystem, despite their small populations. The newest arrivals may be simply decorative, adding little to the ecosystem's structure.

I. 

But to Wilkinson, this sounds like clutching at straws. And the idea of the instant formation of rainforests sounds increasingly plausible as research reveals that supposedly pristine tropical rainforests from the Amazon to south-east Asia may in places be little more than the overgrown gardens of past rainforest civilisations.

J. 

The most incredible fact is that no ecologists have thought about conducting thorough research on this human-made rainforest ecosystem. The University of Edinburgh conducted a survey of the island's flora six years ago, focusing entirely on endemic species. They considered everything else to be dangerous. And the authorities of Ascension are currently transforming Green Mountain into a national park where introduced species, at least the invasive ones, are slated for elimination rather than conservation.

K. 

Wilkinson states that conservationists have valid considerations. At least four endemic species have vanished since the appearance of unfamiliar species in Ascension. However, in their rush to save endemics, ecologists have forgotten to analyze an important secret. 

L. 

As you walk through the forest, you observe numerous leaves that have been partially consumed by insects. Wilkinson says, ‘There are larvae and insects nearby.’ But where did they originate? Are they native or exotic? Wilkinson says, ‘There are larvae and insects nearby.’ But where did they originate? Are they native or exotic? If extraterrestrial, did they bring the plant on which they feed with them, or did they find it upon arrival?' Such questions are fundamental to understanding how rainforests form.The Green Mountain forest holds numerous mysteries. The irony is that the most manufactured rainforest in the world could teach us more about the rainforest ecosystem than any number of natural rainforests.