The effect of brand on EEG modulation : a study on mineral water

Consumers often develop close relationships with their preferred brands and goods. To achieve marketing goals, companies need to develop in customers a positive brand attachment. When they succeed, the brand is immediately recognized, it elicits specific responses, 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 present study measured brain responses to different brands of mineral water. In particular, we were interested in analyzing the impact of brand attachment on brain modulation. We hypothesized that brand evaluation would be associated with reward processing, and that brain oscillatory activity would be modulated by different expectations based on previous experience. Time-frequency analyses of EEG oscillatory activity were performed on 26 healthy subjects (13 males and 13 females) during water intake of differently labeled glasses of mineral water. Our results confirmed that brand processing is related to activity of the frontocentral reward-related network. Beta activity seems to be modulated by the experience of pleasure associated with a favorite brand, while 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, we confirmed a possible relationship between brand evaluation and reward processing