In many cases, consumers develop tight relationships with their preferred brands and goods. Companies aim at developing strong and positive emotional relationships between their brands and their customers. When they succeed, the brand is immediately recognized and it becomes more difficult to be _replaced by competitors. Previous studies have suggested the existence of a relationship between brand evaluation and a reward-related functional circuit.
The aim of the present study is to gauge brain responses to different mineral water brands. In particular, we were interested in analyzing the impact of brand attachment on brain modulation. We hypothesized that brand evaluation is associated with the processing of reward, and then that the brain oscillatory activity may be found to be modulated by different expectations, based on previous experiences.
Time-frequency analyses of the EEG oscillatory activity were performed on 26 healthy subjects (13 males and 13 females) during water intake of differently labeled mineral water.
Our results confirmed that brand processing is joined with the activity of the frontocentral reward-related network. Beta activity, , seems to be modulated by the experience of pleasure associated to a favorite brand. Consequently, theta modulation seems to reflect the lack of this experience.
In conclusion, our study showed how exposure to a brand can affect EEG modulation. Additionally