Things Become Appealing When I Win: Neural Evidence of the Influence of Competition Outcomes on Brand Preference

Against the background of an increasingly competitive market environment, the current study aimed to investigate whether and how victory and defeat, as two critical factors in competition outcomes, would affect consumers’ preference of unfamiliar brands. In the experiment, participants’ status of victory or defeat was induced by a pseudo-online game, followed by a main task of brand preference rating. Using the precise and intuitive attributes of neuroscientific techniques, we adopted event-related potentials to analyze brain activity precisely during brand information processing when individuals experienced victory or defeat. Behavioral data showed that individuals had a stronger preference for unfamiliar brands in victory trials than in defeat trials, even if the brand was completely unrelated to the competition; this indicated a transfer of valence. Three emotion-related event-related potential components, N1, P2 and later positive potentials, were elicited more negatively in victory trials than in defeat trials, indicating the existence of incidental emotions induced by victory or defeat. No significant correlation was found between any pair of ERP components and preference scores. These results suggest that the experience of victory and defeat can evoke corresponding incidental emotions without awareness, and further affect the individual’s preference for unfamiliar brands. Therefore, playing a game before presenting brand information might help promote the brand by inducing a good impression of the brand in consumers.