Is Distant Extension Always Upset? Neural Evidence of Empathy and Brand Association Affect Distant Extension Evaluation

Abstract

Distant brand extension as an essential strategy of obtaining benefits was highly focused on the normal marketing practice and academic research. In the current study, we aim to recognize that how individuals with different levels of empathy respond to distant extensions under corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate competence (CC) associations to explore the corresponding neural mechanisms using event-related potentials (ERPs). We divided subjects into two groups involving a high empathy (HE) group and a low empathy (LE) group according to an empathy measure questionnaire. The subjects first faced a brand name following the CSR or CC association descriptions, and then, they were asked to evaluate the new product of brand by a five-point scale. Current results revealed that the participants of the HE group were more apt to accept the distant extension products than those of the LE group. Additionally, in the HE group, products from a brand with CSR associations were more acceptable than CC associations. Moreover, a larger N2 amplitude was elicited in the LE group than in the HE group. For the LE group, an augment N2 was found under CSR than CC associations, reflecting that LE consumers might perceive conflict when evaluating distant extensions and allocate more cognitive resources to deal with CSR information. At the later stage, the HE group showed a greater P3 than the LE group. For the HE group, an increased P3 was elicited under CSR than CC associations, suggesting that empathic individuals might show motivational salience and helping willingness toward distant extension products, especially under the CSR scenario. These results provide potential electrophysiological evidence for the positive impact of brand associations on the evaluation of distant brand extension in the case of subdividing different empathic individuals.

How does the use of simultaneous contrast illusion on product-background color combination nudge consumer behavior? A behavioral and event-related potential study

“…As expected, the N2 and P3 components were induced by four conditions. Based on observation of the grand-averaged ERPs results and previous neuroscience studies, a time window of 200–270 ms was selected to analyze the mean N2 amplitude ( Shang et al, 2017 ; Jing et al, 2019 ; Ma et al, 2021 ) and a time window of 310–460 ms was used to analyze the mean P3 amplitude ( Fudali-Czyż et al, 2016 ; Shang et al, 2017 ; Song et al, 2022 ). For the N2 component, five electrodes distributed in the prefrontal-central region were selected for a 2 (product type: heaviness-positive product vs. heaviness-negative product) × 2 (presentation mode: saturated background vs. desaturated background) × 5 (electrode: F3, Fz, F4, FC1, and FC2) within-subjects repeated-measures ANOVA.…”

“…Based on the S1-S2 paradigm, Han et al (2015) showed that a more negative N2 component is induced when S1 and S2 differ in color, shape, and direction. Furthermore, the N2 component is evoked by perception conflicts (Ma et al, 2007(Ma et al, , 2010(Ma et al, , 2021Shang et al, 2017;Song et al, 2020Song et al, , 2022. Wang et al (2016), for instance, asked participants to make purchase decisions based on product ratings and sales and found that the low product rating condition resulted in higher response conflicts, as reflected by the larger N2 amplitude.…”