Brand extension typically has two strategies: brand name extension (BN) and brand logo extension (BL). The current study explored which strategy (BN or BL) better enhanced the success of dissimilar brand extension and product promotion in enterprises. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate electrophysiological processes when subjects evaluated their acceptance of the brand extension using a combined picture of S1 and S2. S1 was a famous brand presented by two identity signs (brand name and brand logo). S2 was a picture of an extension product that belonged to a dissimilar product category than S1. The behavior data showed that BL was more acceptable than BN in the dissimilar brand extension. The neurophysiology process was reflected by a less negative N2 component and a larger P300 component in the BL than in the BN. We suggested that N2 reflected a whole conflict between the brand-product combination and the long-term memory and that P300 could be regarded as the reflection of the categorization process in the working memory.

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Humans experience more stress about uncertain situations than certain situations. However, the neural mechanism underlying the uncertainty of a negative stimulus has not been determined. In the present study, event-related potential was recorded to examine neural responses during the dread of unpredictable pain. We used a cueing paradigm in which predictable cues were always followed by electric shocks, unpredictable cues by electric shocks at a 50/50 ratio and safe cues by no electric shock. Visual analogue scales following electric shocks were presented to quantify subjective anxiety levels. The behavioral results showed that unpredictable cues evoked high-level anxiety compared with predictable cues in both painful and unpainful stimulation conditions. More importantly, the ERPs results revealed that unpredictable cues elicited a larger P200 at parietal sites than predictable cues. In addition, unpredictable cues evoked larger P200 compared with safe cues at frontal electrodes and compared with predictable cues at parietal electrodes. In addition, larger P3b and LPP were observed during perception of safe cues compared with predictable cues at frontal and central electrodes. The similar P3b effect was also revealed in the left sites. The present study underlined that the uncertain dread of pain was associated with threat appraisal process in pain system. These findings on early event-related potentials were significant for a neural marker and development of therapeutic interventions.

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Introduction: In online shopping, the webpage layout plays an important part in the consumer's experience. The present study aims to investigate whether the webpage order and which order level (high order vs low order) facilitate consumers' instant purchase decisions for products. Methods: Fourteen right-handed healthy undergraduates and graduate students participated in the experiment as paid participants. In the experiment, participants were presented with daily products in different online shopping webpages (high-order vs low-order) and reported their purchase intentions between purchase and not purchase. Meanwhile, Electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded from the participants throughout the experiment. In the analysis process, two event-related potentials (ERP) components, P2 and late positive potential (LPP) were mainly focused to examine the cognitive mechanism underlying the purchase decisions. Results: The behavioral data found that the low-order shopping webpage facilitated participants' purchase intentions compared with the high-order one. Neurophysiologically, increased P2 amplitudes and increased LPP amplitudes were revealed for the low-order webpage compared to the high-order webpage. The P2 indicates the early stage of attention engagement and discordant perception, while the LPP can be taken as a reflection of the late stage of the emotional self-control process. Conclusion: These results provided evidence that webpage order influenced people's purchase decisions. Low-order webpage design invoked more attention engagement and discordant perception and consumed more self-control resources than the high-order webpage design, which contributed to the higher purchase intentions.