Online neuromarketing research has been conducted in Italy and Finland to assess how different populations perceive sustainable advertising of eco-fashion brands on social media.

The sample has been chosen among young Millennials from two countries expressing several cultures, the Nordic and the Mediterranean. While participants observed a series of social media posts, eye movements and emotions have been recorded using eye tracker and facial coding respectively.

The results demonstrated a trend shared by Finnish and Italian Millennials: sustainable ADV was seen sooner (Time to first fixation) and for longer (Time Viewed).

In particular, in the 'green' post participants looked at the caption containing the explanation of why the fashion item can be considered sustainable, after viewing the image accompanying the post.

Also the negative emotions felt were few when viewing the 'green' post in both Italy and Finland. It is noteworthy that a lower value of negative emotions has been found in Italy than in Finland.

This shows that sustainable ADV has a significant impact on users attitudes toward marketing stimulus in the younger generation in both Italy and Finland. Italians, contrary to stereotypes, are very sensitive to this issue.

The research, conducted by the BrainSigns team in collaboration with Dr Myriam Caratù (UNINT), has been published in Italian Journal of Marketing.

Cite

Caratù, M., Cherubino, P., Menicocci, S. et al. Does sustainable communication have an impact on international social media audiences? A neuromarketing explorative study between Finland and Italy. Ital. J. Mark. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43039-023-00086-z