Electrophysiological and hemodynamic studies provide substantial evidence of dissimilar brain responses when people view emotional compared with neutral pictures. This study investigates consumer brain responses underpinning passive viewing of luxury (high emotional value) versus basic (low emotional value) branded products when participants are alone or with another person. Conforming to social facilitation theory and using electroencephalogram methods, the authors recorded event-related potentials while female participants passively viewed pictures of luxury and basic branded products. They examined event-related-potential amplitudes in three time windows, corresponding to the P2 and P3 components and the late positive potential (LPP). Dissimilar brain responses occurred in the Together but not the Alone condition for the P2 and P3 components over visual cortex sites. The LPP amplitude was higher for luxury than for basic branded products, but only in the Together condition, suggesting that the presence of another person magnifies the emotional effect of brand type. Taken together, the results suggest that LPP amplitude during passive viewing of relevant marketing images reflects increased attention allocation and motivational significance, both enhanced by the presence of another person, to stimuli with higher emotional value.

The application of neurophysiological methods to study the effects of advertising on consumer purchase behavior has seen an enormous growth in recent years. However, little is known about the role social settings have on shaping the human brain during the processing of advertising stimuli. To address this issue, we first review previous key findings of neuroscience research on advertising effectiveness. Next, we discuss traditional advertising research into the effects social context has on the way consumers experience advertising messages and explain why marketers, who aim to predict advertising effectiveness, should place participants in social settings, in addition to the traditional ways of studying consumer brain responses to advertising in social isolation. This article contributes to the literature by offering advertising researchers a series of research agendas on the key indicators of advertising effectiveness (attention, emotion, memory, and preference). It aims to improve understanding of the impact social context has on consumers' neurophysiological responses to advertising messages.

Despite the growing application of interactive technologies like service robots in customer service, there is limited understanding about how customers respond to interactions with frontline service robots compared to those with frontline human employees. Moreover, it is unclear whether all customers respond to the interaction with frontline service robots in the same way. Our research looks at how individual differences in social behaviors, specifically in customers' attachment styles, influence three types of customer responses: affective responses (experienced pleasantness), attitudinal responses (perceived empathy, satisfaction), and behavioral responses (word‐of‐mouth). Three experimental studies reveal that customers with low (vs. high) scores on anxious attachment style (AAS) measures respond more negatively to frontline service robot (compared to a frontline human agent). We investigate alternative explanations for these findings, such as robots' level of anthropomorphism and we show that human‐likeness features such as voice type and level of human‐like physical appearance, cannot explain our findings. Our results indicate that for low‐AAS customers replacing frontline human service agent with frontline robot undermines customer attitude and behavioral responses to service robots, leading to possible implications on customer segmentation, targeting, and marketing communication.

Despite the growing application of augmented reality in advertising, there is limited understanding about how customers respond to their interaction with the augmented reality advertising and how it differs from a standard paper-based advertising. Augmented reality ads are immersive, interactive, and lifelike, which means they may help companies create an emotional connection with their customers. The authors test if customers would respond in terms of emotional and affective intensity differently to augmented reality versus standard paper-based advertising. The results of two laboratory studies that consider physiological measures of arousal (galvanic skin response), self-reported measure of affect intensity and willingness to pay show that the higher willingness to pay for customers exposed to augmented reality as opposed to standard paper-based ads is driven by the physiological arousal, but not by the self-reported affect intensity and that processing fluency possibly underlies consumer’s enhanced emotional responses toward AR. These results suggest that replacing traditional advertisements with augmented reality advertisements enhances customer physiological responses and willingness to pay, with possible implications on customer segmentation and marketing communication.

Influencer marketing has become big business. But while influencers have the potential to spread marketing messages and drive purchase, some posts get lots of engagement and boost sales, while others do not. What makes some posts more impactful? This work examines how sensory language (e.g., words like “crumble” and “juicy” that engage the senses) shapes consumer responses to influencer-sponsored content. A multimethod investigation, combining controlled experiments with automated text, image, and video analysis of thousands of sponsored social media posts, demonstrates that sensory language increases engagement and willingness to buy the sponsored product. Further, the studies illustrate that these effects are driven by perceived authenticity. Sensory language leads consumers to infer that influencers actually use the product they are endorsing, which increases perceived authenticity, and thus engagement and purchase. These findings shed light on how language shapes responses to influencer-sponsored content, deepen understanding of the drivers of authenticity, and suggest how to develop more impactful social media campaigns.