Abstract

We examine how brand advertising invokes a performance enhancement effect for owned brands that is purely advertising and brand driven and unrelated to material product differences, akin to a placebo effect. Using three field studies, we demonstrate that advertisers may selectively invoke the performance enhancement effect among owners of branded products through brand advertising. Our findings show that exposure to brand advertising can increase performance (i.e., exercise duration in our studies) in excess of 20%. Moreover, we show that brand advertising elicits this enhancement effect only when the target, owned brand is in use and that heightened motivation underlies this effect. Furthermore, the enhancement effect, while sizable, does not last into perpetuity. Instead, we show that consumers acclimate over extended periods of exposure to the brand advertising, consistent with psychological habituation theory. These findings point to the importance of ongoing, novel brand advertising over the product ownership life cycle.

摘要

我们研究了品牌广告如何为自有品牌带来绩效提升效应，这种效应纯粹是广告和品牌驱动的，与物质产品差异无关，类似于安慰剂效应。通过三个实地研究，我们证明广告商可以通过品牌广告选择性地在品牌产品所有者中调用性能提升效果。我们的研究结果表明，接触品牌广告可以将绩效（即我们研究中的锻炼持续时间）提高 20% 以上。此外，我们表明，品牌广告只有在使用目标自有品牌时才会引发这种增强效应，而这种效应的基础是更高的动机。此外，增强效果虽然可观，但不会持续到永久。反而，我们表明，消费者在长时间接触品牌广告后会适应，这与心理习惯理论一致。这些发现指出了持续的、新颖的品牌广告在产品所有权生命周期中的重要性。