Investigating the Nexus Between Consumer Neuroscience, Implicit Attitude Formation, and Brand Choice in Nigerian FMCG Markets

This study employs consumer neuroscience methodologies to investigate the nexus between implicit attitude formation and brand choice behaviour in Nigerian FMCG markets, representing a pioneering application of neuroscientific approaches to understanding African consumer cognition. The dominant marketing research paradigm in Nigeria, as in most of sub-Saharan Africa, relies almost exclusively on explicit self-report measures of consumer attitudes and behaviour. This creates a significant methodological blind spot, as neuroscience research in Western contexts has consistently demonstrated that implicit, unconscious attitudes diverge substantially from explicit reports and that implicit attitudes are often stronger predictors of actual choice behaviour. Grounded in dual-process theory, implicit cognition theory, and the neurological correlates of brand preference literature, the study employs a battery of neuromarketing instruments including electroencephalography (EEG), implicit association testing (IAT), and facial action coding in conjunction with traditional survey instruments on 150 FMCG consumers in Lagos and Kano. Multivariate analysis, neural signal processing, and structural modelling integrate explicit and implicit data streams to test the proposed implicit attitude-choice nexus. The study makes an original methodological contribution by pioneering rigorous neuromarketing research in the West African consumer context, and a substantive contribution by demonstrating the divergence between explicit and implicit brand attitudes among Nigerian FMCG consumers, with critical implications for advertising and brand strategy research methodology. Keywords: consumer neuroscience, implicit attitudes, brand choice, FMCG, neuromarketing