An Analysis of Brand Association Perception Using N400 Evoked Potential

In this paper, a novel application of the event-related potential (ERP) method is proposed. The authors applied an N400 evoked potential for brand perception analysis, particularly for brand associations. Traditionally, N400 has been used as a marker of semantic incongruence of a word to a context. The N400 activity is manifested in a more negative deflection of ERP response to incongruent stimuli. We recorded N400 in response to congruent and incongruent sentence endings in marketing and non-marketing contexts, respectively. In the main experimental condition, congruent and incongruent brand associations (nouns) presented before brand names were selected from real marketing campaigns building brand communities. In the control semantic memory N400 condition, the incongruent sentence endings evoked significant fronto-centrally distributed N400 brain response at 300–500 ms. The N400 response in the brand association condition was delayed for 250 ms compared to incongruent words in the context of short sentences and appeared in the central brain area. In this study, we showed for the first time the possibility of applying the N400 method to identify the strength of brand associations using ecologically valid stimuli.