Along with the rapidly growing world economy, copycats emerge everywhere. With visual similarity, copycats may mislead consumers to incorrectly link the copycats to familiar and leading brands. Copycat practices are serious challenges for the leading brands, consumers, and even imitators. In this study, the cognitive differences between a leading brand and a copycat brand were investigated subconsciously by using event-related potentials. Using a questionnaire on the leading brand and the copycat brand, consumers’ attitudes to perceived value of the brand, brand attitude, and purchase intentions were also studied. Electroencephalogram and survey results showed significant differences between the two brands. Consumers’ perceived value, brand attitude, and purchase intention of the leading brand were higher than the copycat brand. The copycat brand elicited a higher P160 and N240 at the front-central area and a higher P240 and lower P400 at the central-parietal area. We supposed that the amplitude variation in event-related potentials expressed different neural activity with regard to the target identification, cognitive control, automatic attention, and categorization mechanism between the original and the counterfeit. This study contributes to understanding the consumers’ different neural activity with regard to the original and the counterfeit and provides a feasible neuroscience-based method to perfect present theories and methodologies on issues concerning imitation. Exploration of the differences between the leading and copycat brands can help companies promote their brand and develop more reasonable marketing strategies.

中文翻译：

---

消费者对领先品牌和模仿者的不同神经活动和态度。

随着世界经济的快速增长，模仿者无处不在。由于视觉相似，模仿者可能会误导消费者将模仿者错误地与熟悉的领先品牌联系起来。模仿行为对领先品牌、消费者甚至模仿者来说都是严峻的挑战。在这项研究中，通过使用事件相关电位潜意识地调查了领先品牌和模仿品牌之间的认知差异。使用对领先品牌和山寨品牌的问卷调查，还研究了消费者对品牌感知价值、品牌态度和购买意愿的态度。脑电图和调查结果显示两个品牌之间存在显着差异。领先品牌的消费者感知价值、品牌态度和购买意愿均高于山寨品牌。山寨品牌在前中央区域引起较高的 P160 和 N240，在中央顶叶区域引起较高的 P240 和较低的 P400。我们假设事件相关电位的幅度变化在目标识别、认知控制、自动注意和原始和伪造之间的分类机制方面表达了不同的神经活动。本研究有助于了解消费者对正品和假货的不同神经活动，并提供一种可行的基于神经科学的方法来完善目前关于模仿问题的理论和方法。探索领先品牌和山寨品牌之间的差异，可以帮助企业推广品牌，制定更合理的营销策略。