Journal of Economic Psychology 90 (2022) 102506

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Journal of Economic Psychology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/joep

N400 correlate of brand associations

Aleksei Gorin a, *, Anastasia Nedelko b, Vladimir Kosonogov a, Maria Vakhviyainen c,
Sergey Tugin d, Victoria Moiseeva a, Vasily Klucharev a, Anna Shestakova a
a
Centre for Cognition and Decision Making, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia
b
Laboratory of Network Organizational Forms, Higher School of Business, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia
c
Faculty of Biology, Saint-Petersburg University, Saint-Petersburg, Russia
d
Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering (NBE), Aalto University, School of Science, Finland

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: A number of neuromarketing studies employed brain responses called event-related potentials or
Event-related potential ERPs as neural markers of brand associations. The use of the N400 component of ERPs in
N400 particular appeared to be the promising to study typicality of product-brand associations and
Electroencephalography
their role for brand extension (Wang et al., 2012).
Neuromarketing
Brand association
The question, however, remains whether the N400 observed in the product-brand associations
and brand associations as such can be explained by the same neurobiological mechanisms as the
classical N400 response which in the neuroscience of language reflects semantic associations. In
this electroencephalographic study, we compared semantic N400 in response to incongruency of
sentence endings with the neural response to the degree of incongruency of associations to
brands.
To test, whether in the same subjects, incongruent brand associations would elicit the N400
brain response resembling semantic N400 we constructed two-word phrases in which brand
names were proceeded by congruent or incongruent adjectives that played the role of brand
associations. Sentences lacking any marketing context served as control stimuli and evoked
classical centro-parietally distributed N400 response.
The sensitivity of the brain activity to the incongruent brand associations was manifested in the
fronto-centrally distributed N400 response within the same time window as in the non-marketing
context. However, the correlation analysis of the N400 amplitudes in the brand and non-brand
conditions did not reveal significant association between them suggesting different neuronal
networks subserving processing of pure semantic and brand-association incongruences. To
conclude, further studies employing multichannel EEG or magnetoencephalographic imaging
would be necessary to elucidate the brain origin of brand and marketing associations as compared
to pure semantic associations.

1. Introduction

Every day we are exposed to numerous advertisement and marketing materials which modulate our semantic memory. Marketing
communications often aim to create or change the brand associations encoded in consumers’ semantic memory so that they perceive a

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: agorin@hse.ru (A. Gorin).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2022.102506
Received 15 November 2020; Received in revised form 27 November 2021; Accepted 22 February 2022
Available online 24 February 2022
0167-4870/© 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
A. Gorin et al. Journal of Economic Psychology 90 (2022) 102506

particular brand as being favourable and unique. Importantly, brands with strong associations are also more competitive (Brown,
Kozinets, & Sherry, 2003) as compared with brands with less strong associations.
Over the last decade, many marketing studies have focused on objective measures of brand perception and brand associations
(Fudali-Czyż et al., 2016; Wang, Ma, & Wang, 2012). Such studies normally use traditional research methods: questionnaires, focus
groups, or in-depth interviews (Belén del Río, Vazquez, & Iglesias, 2001; Gladden & Funk, 2002; Low & Lamb, 2000; O’Cass & Frost,
2002). However, there are internal and external factors that can influence the accuracy of traditional marketing research methods
(Harris, Ciorciari, & Gountas, 2018). For example, the data obtained through traditional methods helps to find out consumer in­
tentions, but often does not reflect real behavior. In turn, physiological data make it possible to record a person’s subconscious re­
actions to a particular marketing stimulus. This became a reason of appearance of neuromarketing concept (Smidts et al., 2014b),
which combined the physiological methods of research and the aspect of consumer behavior, recording the response of the human
body to certain marketing stimuli. At the same time, it is often hard to identify real consumers’ thoughts about brand associations using
traditional marketing research methods. Thus, new and more objective measures of brand associations could add a novel and
important tool to the field.
Recently, in the search for objective correlates of the effectiveness of marketing campaigns researchers have started to employ
various behavioural markers of valuation, perception, and sensory processing of brand names (Baker, 2003; Bargh, 2002; Chartrand,
Huber, Shiv, & Tanner, 2008; Dimofte & Yalch, 2011; Friese, Wänke, & Plessner, 2006; Janiszewski, 1993; Moore, 1988; Shapiro,
1999; Zaltman, 2000). Succeeding from neuroeconomics, the new field of evidence-based neuromarketing (Smidts et al., 2014a) not
only brings novel approaches of fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) or EEG (Electroencephalography) monitoring the
brain dynamics associated with consumer behaviour, but also predicts consumer choice of a particular product (Berns & Moore, 2012;
Falk et al., 2016; Genevsky & Knutson, 2015; Knutson, Rick, Wimmer, Prelec, & Loewenstein, 2007).
In the applied neuromarketing research, EEG appears to be one of the most popular approaches due to its balanced cost-efficiency
ratio, non-invasiveness, and high temporal resolution. Number of state-of-art EEG studies (Bennett, Duke, & Fuggetta, 2014; Cui,
Wang, Wang, Tian, & Kong, 2000; Kong et al., 2000; Ma et al., 2007, 2010; Ma, Wang, & Da, 2020; Mao & Wang, 2008; Wang, Cui,
Wang, Tian, & Zhang, 2004; Yang, Lee, Seomoon, & Kim, 2018) investigated the neural correlates of brand extensions, when new
product is released under the same brand name. For example, Ma, Wang, Shu, and Dai (2008) investigated the modulation of the
attention-related P300 component of the event-related potential (ERP) with regard to brand-product associations. A strong association
between the brand names and the product type resulted in a larger P300 amplitude. Wang et al. (2012) recorded the language specific
N400 brain signal for the product’s attributes which were atypical to the category of the brand in the context of brand extension, when
the established brand name is used to market a new product. In their study, participants were presented with a pair of sequential
stimuli consisting of a soft drink brand name and two product types: a beverage – the typical product extension for that particular
brand – and clothing – an atypical product for the same brand. The atypical brand extension triggered the fronto-central N400. Yang
et al. (2018) found that N400 and P300 indicate that subjects might first detect low-fit service-to-service brand extension as an
improbable target followed by the late stage of the integration. Following the conceptual idea that brands are represented as mental
categories (Aaker & Keller, 1990), Wang and colleagues reasoned that the N400 elicited in their study reflected an integration and
conceptual process related to the mental categorization of brands. However, the question remains as to whether the brain networks
subserving the N400 response registered in the brand context and the semantic incongruent N400 are similar or not. In an EEG study,
such dis/similarities may be reflected in the spatio-temporal characteristics of ERPs.
The N400 is a component of an EEG signal, evoked by an anomalous or semantically incongruent word in a sentence or string of
words. This electrophysiological response was first observed by Kutas and Hillyard (1980). They also found that the N400 potential of
ERP reflected semantic incongruity: it occurred in response to a semantically anomalous word in a sentence context, such as ‘city’ in
the sentence, ‘He shaved off his moustache and city’. The authors confirmed that the observed negativity was evoked not only by the
unexpected action deviation but also by a correlate connected to the semantic processing of the stimuli. A variety of publications
consider the N400 in the paradigm of lexical or sentential meanings (Brown & Hagoort, 1993; Chwilla, Brown, & Hagoort, 1995;
Halgren et al., 2002; Kiefer, 2002; Kutas & Federmeier, 2011; Lau, Phillips, & Poeppel, 2008; Berkum et al., 1999). Importantly, N400
studies have been expanded into non-linguistic contexts, including picture sequences, photos of objects in a visual scene, and short
videos of everyday events (reviewed in Sitnikova, Kuperberg, & Holcomb, 2003; Kutas & Federmeier, 2011).
The term “N400” originates from its peak latency in the first studies (Kutas & Federmeier, 2011). A number of subsequent studies,
however, showed that the N400 latency varied in the range of 250–500 ms depending on modality or experimental condition (for
reviews see Kutas & Federmeier, 2011; Lau et al., 2008). The N400 usually has a central or centro-parietal distribution of its voltage on
the isopotential map (Kutas, Van Petten, & Besson, 1988). Several decades of N400 studies have provided a number of conceptual
views on its origin. According to one theory, the N400 increases in semantically anomalous sentences because semantic integration is
easier in congruent contexts than in implausible contexts (Federmeier & Laszlo, 2009). According to another view, semantically
congruent (i.e., predictable) words are accessed more easily in memory (Ganis et al., 1996; Holcomb, 1993; Holcomb & Grainger,
2009; Kutas & Hillyard, 1984). However, to the best of our knowledge, the neurocognitive mechanism of the N400 is still under debate:
both aforementioned theories are supported by the experimental evidence (Lau et al., 2008). In this light, comparing source activations
and/or distributions of the brand-association N400 with semantic-association N400 could be of great interest.
The marketing N400 research conceptualizes its findings in the framework of the memory-related hypothesis. The choice of the
neural correlate of semantic memory – the N400 – seems to be promising as branding focuses on the dynamics and plasticity of brand
associations, building new associations or influencing old ones and thus changing loyalty, recognition, memory, and values for brands.
While neuroscience of brand associations is in its beginning, the N400 research in language is ample (for a review, see Lau et al., 2008).
Despite growing optimism to conceptualize the brand association processing through semantic theories, there is not much evidence

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showing that semantic incongruences and brand-product associations are subserved by the same brain networks in the same in­
dividuals. In other words, existing ERP research concentrate only on the incongruency of marketing stimuli (see Ma et al., 2020).
Additionally, the majority of previous studies concentrates on the brand extension concept, while it is interesting to consider brand
associations as a cornerstone of correct brand positioning and identity as well (Janonis, Dovalienė, & Virvilaitė, 2007). Following this
line of thinking, we reason that N400 can serve as indicator which helps marketers to understand if current positioning matches with
brand image in consumers’ minds. In the current study, we strove to go further and check within the one subjects’ sample whether the
more general mechanism of semantic memory, namely the congruency effect probed by the N400, can be sensitive to the congruent
and incongruent brand associations.
Taking together the existing evidence about the ERP results in the neuromarketing research we concluded that this method could be
used to investigate neural correlates of brand associations. The best candidate for this experiment is the N400 ERP component that
manifests both in semantic tasks and in the neuromarketing paradigms. We hypothesized that N400 would be registered in the classic
semantic (or Non-Brand) paradigm as well as in the paradigm where subjects would be presented with brand-related words. However,
we assumed that the patterns of N400 could differ between the conditions, therefore, the neural mechanisms generating the
component could be distinct both in temporal and spatial domains. In this study, we recorded the N400 response to integrated brand
associations of different strengths in novel advertising messages and compared the magnitude and latency of the brand-associated
N400 signal with the N400 observed in the sentence reading task.

2. Material and methods

2.1. Participants

Twenty female participants (aged 18–26 years, average age 20 years), who knew and had used all of the brands at least once, took
part in a within-subject experiment; at the stimulus preselection phase we found that male participants’ familiarity of the cloths brands
was very low. We therefore chose to invite female participants as more elaborate shoppers. All participants were right-handed (ac­
cording to the Oldfield (1971) questionnaire) native Russian speakers with normal or corrected to normal eyesight and no history of
neurological or psychiatric disorders. All participants gave their written consent to take part in the experiment and were paid for their
participation. The experiments were performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki with approval of the ethics committees
of Saint-Petersburg State University, Russia. The data was collected in Saint-Petersburg State University, Saint-Petersburg, and ana­
lysed in National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia.

2.2. Stimuli

In the EEG study, we used the pictures of brand logos following the association words (adjectives) (Fig. 1). The following procedure
was applied to construct the pairs of brand association and a brand name. First, we selected 68 most popular Russian brands from the
brand rating list at http://www.top20brands.ru (2013). We then constructed two sets of the brand associations– semantically close
(congruent) and semantically distant (incongruent). For this we preselected three associations for each brand using Russian association
dictionary (http://www.tesaurus.ru/dict/) where applicable and three expert’s opinions (one economist, one linguist, and one

Fig. 1. The probe structure in Brand association and Non-brand conditions.

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psycholinguist) in all other cases. After this, we conducted a survey in the Russian social network analogue of Facebook, Vkontakte (vk.
com), where 20 people age-matched to participants of the main EEG experiment were asked to select from the three adjectives which
for them were most strongly associated with the brand. The most highly ranked adjectives were then chosen to be used as congruent
brand association stimuli in the EEG experiment. After this, using the selected cohort of congruent stimuli, we constructed the
incongruent stimuli following the rule of opposite meaning: e.g., cheap–expensive, delicious–tasteless etc., thus forming poorly
associated word combinations as opposed to congruent or strongly associated pairs.
Overall, congruent brand associations (n = 68) or incongruent brand associations (n = 68) were randomly presented in the context
of popular brands. With the exception of the ‘expensive’ association, each word was presented once. We hypothesized that the
incongruent brand attributes would evoke a larger N400 response than congruent brand attributes. For the control, we constructed 104
short sentences lacking any brand context with congruent (n = 52) (e.g., ‘I drink coffee’) and incongruent meanings as a non-brand
control condition (e.g., ‘I eat the shoe’) (Fig. 1).

2.3. Experimental procedure and study design

The experiment consisted of two blocks during which participants were exposed to brand association statements (Brand condition)
and short sentences (Non-Brand condition). In each condition, the congruent word combinations were randomly interspersed with
incongruent ones.
The stimuli were presented using the NBS Presentation software. Each probe started with a fixation cross that appeared for 500 ms
trial. Then each of 3 words appeared one by one for 500 ms each in the Non-Brand condition. In the Brand condition, the associated
word preceded brand appearance for the same 500 ms per screen manner. We used 500 ms stimulus presentation since the brand logo
could have taken more time to be processed. A number of previous N400 studies also used the same onset period of 500 ms (e.g.,
Johnson and Hamm (2000). Each probe was followed by a intertrial interval randomly set between 1000 and 2000 ms. The Brand and
Non-Brand conditions were grouped in blocks4 we used a total of 134 trials during the Brand condition and a total of 104 trials during
the Non-Brand condition; number of congruent and incongruent probes was equal in each condition. The order of the blocks was
counterbalanced across the subjects. After the EEG recording, the participants ranked the familiarity (familiar or not) of brand names
and brand-association congruency (5-point Likert scale: 1 most incongruent, 5 most congruent). This information was used to discard
or retain the probes in the individual ERP analysis based on the congruency of the participant’s ranking with the predetermined
stimulus type (congruent or incongruent). On average, 15% (from 8 to 43%) of the probes were discarded from the individual-subject
averaged response. The average number of probes in the Brand condition was equal to 55.
During the study, participants sat in a chair facing a monitor located approximately 40 cm in front of them. The participants were
instructed to fix their gaze on the centre of the screen, where a fixation cross was displayed, and to focus on the visual stimuli. To
control for participants’ attention, in 10% of the trials, participants were presented with a control question (Do you think that the
words – or a word and picture of the brand logo – were (semantically) associated?) to which they were offered to response to with the
‘Yes’ or ‘No’ button press.

2.4. EEG recording, processing, and statistical analysis

The EEG signal was recorded with a 24-channel digital amplifier model Mitsar-EEG-201 (Mitsar LLC, St. Petersburg, Russia) and a
set of Nicolet gold-plated EEG electrodes located on the surface of the head in accordance with the International 10–20 system in 17
leads (Fp1, Fpz, Fp2, F3, Fz, F4, C3, Cz, C4, P3, Pz, P4, O1, Oz, O2) with sampling rate set to 500 Hz. Electrodes T3 and T4 were placed
below the left eye and lateral to its outer canthus to control for vertical and horizontal eye movements.
Electrode impedances were kept below 5 kΩ. EEG data analysis was performed using the Brainstorm package (Tadel, Baillet,
Mosher, Pantazis, & Leahy, 2011). Prior to the analysis, the data were manually inspected to reject noisy segments, then we used
Infomax ICA to suppress artifacts caused by eye movements and heartbeats. The data were band-pass filtered (1–40 Hz) and then
epoched into segments starting 200 ms before the stimulus onset and ending 800 ms after. ERPs were locked to the stimulus onset – to
the brand logo once separately for each stimulus type (congruent and incongruent). The prestimulus interval of − 200 to 0 ms was used
as a baseline.
To obtain individual ERPs, all trial types were averaged separately for each condition (Brand and Non-brand), stimulus type
(congruent, incongruent), and participant. The grand average ERPs were calculated for all trial types. The difference waves were also
calculated by subtracting ERPs to the congruent stimuli from ERPs to the incongruent stimuli. We used a non-parametric paired
permutation (significance level α = 0.05) test to estimate the presence of the N400 as the difference between the congruent and
incongruent stimuli (Maris & Oostenveld, 2007).
To check if the N400 magnitude in frontal-parietal direction differs between the conditions, we performed 2-way ANOVA with the
factors Location (Frontal (Fz), Central (Cz), and Parietal (Pz)) and Condition (Brand and Non-brand). In order to seek for association
between the two conditions, we performed the correlation analysis using Pearson correlation between the N400 responses in the
experimental and control conditions matching average ERP magnitudes. The N400 values for the correlation analysis were obtained by
averaging incongruent-minus-congruent responses in the 350–450 ms time window at Cz and Pz, as the N400 responses had the largest
negative deflection at these electrode sites. Prior the correlation analysis we tested the data for normality. According to Kolmorogov-
Smirnov test, the N400 amplitudes were distributed normally (all ds > 0.07, all ps > 0.20) across all conditions and electrodes.

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A. Gorin et al. Journal of Economic Psychology 90 (2022) 102506

3. Results

In the Non-brand condition, we observed centro-parietal negative deflection to incongruent rather than to congruent sentence
endings in the interval between 300 and 500 ms. Spatial and temporal characteristics of the negative deflection were similar to the
standard N400 (Kutas et al., 1988). This observation was also supported by the results of permutation tests, which demonstrated that
the N400 significantly increased for incongruent sentence endings at the Cz, C4, P3, Pz, P4, O1, Oz, O2, T5, and T6 electrodes (Fig. 2)
(marked in red). In the Brand condition, we observed negatively displaced deflection to incongruent brand associations as compared to
the congruent brand associations (Fig. 2). The topographical map of the difference response demonstrates a clear fronto-central
maximum of the N400 component (Fig. 2) for the topographic differences between the potential distribution in Brand and Non-
brand conditions, see Supplementary materials (Fig. S2). The permutation test revealed a statistically significant difference be­
tween ERPs to incongruent and congruent brain attributes of between 330 ms and 460 ms at the F3, Fz, F4, C3, Cz, and C4 electrodes
(Fig. 2). The latencies of the N400 response did not differ between the two conditions (F (1, 20) = 1.18, p = 0.29, η2p = 0.056) as was
shown in the 1-way ANOVA: Non-brand N400 had a maximal deflection at 364 ms, whereas the brand-associated N400 had a peak at
400 ms.
The N400 to the incongruent brand association was distributed more frontally compared to the brain response in the non-marketing
context (Fig. 2). To investigate whether the N400 amplitude differed between Brand and Non-brand conditions, we performed the 2-
way ANOVA. The ANOVA revealed no significant interaction of factors Condition and Location (F (2, 40) = 1.56, p = 0.22, η2p = 0.07).
While Location had the significant effect on the N400 amplitude (F (2, 40) = 5.58, p = 0.007, η2p = 0.22), no significant effect was
found for Condition (F (1, 20) = 0.22, p = 0.64, η2p = 0.01). Tukey HSD test revealed that the magnitude of N400 signal was lower at Fz
electrode site (-1.3 µV) comparing to Cz (-1.6 µV, p = 0.46) and Pz (-1.7 µV, p = 0.008). An uncorrected Pearson analysis showed
significant correlation at Pz electrode (r = 0.44, p = 0.047), whereas no significant correlation was found at Cz electrode (r = 0.4, p =
0.07). Of note, the multiple comparison correction made the Pz correlation not significant (p = 0.094).
After the EEG experiment, the participants rated the perceived congruency/incongruency of the brand associations. The mean
value of the perceived associations was 4.42 for congruent and 1.45 for incongruent conditions. The results of in/congruency ratings of
brand names to the brand message are presented in Fig. S1 of the Supplementary materials.

Fig. 2. On the left – ERP responses to Brand (top) and Non-brand association (bottom), Cz electrode site. Time spans of significant differences
between conditions are highlighted in green; shaded areas represent standard error. On the right – electric potential distribution of the N400 signal,
incongruent minus congruent, 400 ms post stimulus; red dots indicate electrodes where significand differences were observed.

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4. Discussion

In the current study, we tested whether word processing neurocircuitry indexed by the N400 component of visual ERP can be
sensitive to the congruency of brand associations using self-constructed brand association stimulus and whether this sensitivity is
indexed by the comparable neurodynamics of the brain responses in the brand and non-brand conditions.
In the context of brand associations, where short marketing communications were framed as commercial slogans, we observed a
fronto-central negative deflection evoked by the adjectives weakly associated with the brands. The spatio-temporal characteristics of
the N400 response to the weak association brands were very similar to the semantic N400 responses to the incongruent endings of
sentences in the amplitude and voltage distribution.
Previous studies have demonstrated that the N400 correlates with incongruence between the product category and the previously
presented brand (Fudali-Czyż et al., 2016; Ma et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2012). In Wang et al. (2012), the soft drink brand name
(stimulus 1) was a mental category and the N400 was elicited by the clothing name (stimulus 2, atypical category) compared with the
beverage name (stimulus 2, typical category). The clothing product name, which had few attributes belonging to the soft drink
category, evoked a large N400 component, peaking at 400 ms and distributed over most brain areas from the frontal to parie­
tal–occipital area, and its amplitude was larger in the frontal, fronto-central, and central areas
In our experiment, we found the same activity in the fronto-central and central areas in the case of brand associations. The dis­
tribution of N400 voltage on the scalp in our study corresponds well to the findings of Wang et al. (2012) and other context-dependent
N400 effects that tend to have a centro-parietal scalp distribution (Kutas et al., 1988).
For the first time, we further tested whether the N400 responses in the branding context was associated with the N400 evoked by
the pure semantic incongruencies. No significant correlation was found after performing correction for multiple comparison. This
result suggests further clarifying whether brand-related neural activity may involve an alternative network comparing to the classical
semantic N400. To improve spatial resolution of the neuroimaging approach to study neurodynamics linked with the brand associ­
ations and memory, one could propose the use of magnetoencephalography which excels source modeling as compared with EEG
(Hämäläinen et al., 1994) and can partially reconcile the EEG data with fMRI.
As for N400 research studying brand perception, most studies consider brand associations as a way to evaluate the success of
possible brand extension. For example, it is confirmed that N400 correlates of the processing of categorization in a brand extension,
where there is incongruence between the product category and the previously established brand (Fudali-Czyż et al., 2016; Wang et al.,
2012). In the current study, we further investigated brand associations to identify mismatches between image (how consumers
perceive a brand) and positioning (how the brand is created to be perceived). This empowers the practical application of the current
study because the design can be used by every brand, not only by those who plan an extension.
During last decade, brand extension studies showed the new avenue to the practical implementation of the N400 approach (Wang
et al., 2004, 2012). Recently, the new area of marketing research called neuropricing has evolved (Herbes, Friege, Baldo, & Mueller,
2015). Together with previous neuromarketing research, the study of Herbes and colleagues showed that neuroimaging can help to
avoid common behavioural biases and can be used not only for testing the effects of product characteristics on willingness to pay, but
also for evaluating WTP effects of specific messages in marketing communications. To facilitate the brand-customer relationship,
marketing also emphasizes the need to engage customers in communication with a brand by sharing congruent to the brand visual,
auditory, or textual content (Morgan & Hunt, 1994; Muniz & O’guinn, 2001; Vargo & Lusch, 2004, 2008). The neuroimaging can be
used to test effects of real-life marketing communications on brand associations. Overall, the N400 approach may lead to a better
understanding of consumer behavior and hence facilitate more successful marketing campaigns of goods. Our results not only add to
unveiling the neural mechanisms of brand associations but also reveals the potential of N400 research in real-life marketing, neu­
robranding, and possibly, neuropricing.

5. Conclusions

We found that incongruent brand statements evoked the N400 response whose amplitude was not associated with classical N400
response to the incongruent sentence endings evoked in the same participants. Further neuroimaging evidence would be necessary to
test whether processing of brand and other marketing associations recruit similar neural circuitries as non-marketing associations.
Overall, the N400 appears to be a promising tool to test brand associations and possibly predict the effectiveness of marketing
communications.

Funding

This work was supported by the NeuroTrend research company in the framework of the project N◦NB/I-1-01.01.2017 (’Monitoring
consumer behavior in various contexts’).

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.

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Appendix A. Supplementary material

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2022.102506.

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Further readings

Barr, A., & Feigenbaum, E. A. (1982). The handbook of artificial intelligence. Lost Altos, CA: William Kaufman.
Kutas, M., & Federmeier, K. D. (2011a). Thirty years and counting: Finding meaning in the N400 component of the event related brain potential (ERP). Annual Review
of Psychology, 2011(62), 621–647.
Kutas, M., & Federmeier, K. D. (2011b). Thirty years and counting: Finding meaning in the N400 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP). Annual Review
of Psychology, 62, 621–647.