Recent interest in neuroeconomic methods to study buying behavior underscores attempts to understand the processes by which consumers make these decisions.
For example, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),Knutson et al. (2007) showed that excessive prices were linked to increased insular activity and decreased activity in medial prefrontal regions.
These findings confirm the positive relationship between perceived price unfairness and negative affect that has been proposed elsewhere (Xia et al., 2004), and are largely consistent with Bechara and Damasio’s (2005) somatic marking notion that our brains map anticipated outcomes of purchases from interoceptive emotional signals prior to decision making, which then guide choice.