ABOUT

The Consuming Brain was created by Maja Säholm Westling, a Swedish brand strategist and behavioral insight practitioner exploring how neuroscience and psychology shape brand perception and purchasing decisions.

She is the recipient of the 2025 Influential Businesswoman Award (Malta) by Acqisition International.

Over the past fifteen years, her career has spanned luxury sales, retail, wholesale, digital marketing, and customer experience, working with some of the world’s most prestigious brands in London, UK. Across these environments, one question consistently shaped her thinking:

Why do people truly choose one brand over another?

Through years of working directly with customers, campaigns, and brand strategies, a clear insight emerged: purchasing decisions are rarely driven by logic alone. They are shaped by deeper psychological patterns involving emotion, memory, identity, and belonging.

To explore these patterns more rigorously, she pursued further study in neuromarketing, consumer neuroscience, and behavioral science through programs from Johns Hopkins University, Copenhagen Business School, and Yale University.

From this exploration emerged The Consuming Brain Method™, a framework that integrates scientific insight with practical brand strategy to explain how perception, trust, and identity form in the human mind.

Today, her work focuses on helping founders, strategists, and brand leaders approach positioning not simply as messaging, but as the architecture of perception.

Because when brands align with the psychological structures that shape human meaning and belonging, they move beyond visibility - and become part of how people understand themselves and the communities they identify with.

The Consuming Brain exists to help founders understand how perception shapes value, meaning, and choice in competitive markets.

Certifications:

Neuromarketing Specialization
Johns Hopkins University

Consumer Neuroscience & Neuromarketing
Copenhagen Business School

Health Behavior Change & The Science of Happiness
Yale University