First attention then intention

Abstract

Attention is a critical construct for anyone involved in marketing. However, research on attention is currently lacking in the marketing discipline. This is perhaps due to inher- ent difficulties in measuring attention. The current paper accentuates the importance of better understanding attention, and suggests studying attention as a two-component construct consisting of equally important bottom-up and top-down processes. While research on top-down attention has recently been undertaken by Pieters and Wedel (2004; 2007), the current paper introduces the field of computational neuroscience and its research on visual attention as a useful framework for studying bottom-up attention.