Summary Consumer Behaviour ‘Article 1; Red Bull Gives You Wings for Better or Worse: A
double-edged Impact of Brand Exposure on Consumer Performance (Brasel & Gips)’
Introduction
Effects of brand exposure on consumer behaviour have become important area of research. In
experiment of a racing game, the effects of Red Bull branding were studied. Red Bull’s brand identity
(speed, energy, aggressive risk-taking) could create both positive and negative pressures on
consumer performance -> double-sided effects of brand exposure on behaviour. Brand identity
impacted the objective metric of race time through a highly abstract path, as the players and in-game
avatar weren’t consuming the product. But product attributes sugar, caffeine, taurine, and ginseng
don’t directly impact car performance.
Goal of article is to explore whether brand exposure may be double-sided: having simultaneous
positive and negative effects across consumers on performance.
Exploring the double-sided effects of brand exposure
Brand identity plays large role in priming judgements of product quality and enjoyment of consumption
process. Brand priming effects can be extended to non-consumption environments -> incidental or
nonconscious exposure to brand can trigger goal-relevant behaviour and cognitions. Brand exposure
can serve as environmental cue that trigger nonconscious behavioural processes, which lead to
various behavioural outcomes.
Traditional advertising (mere exposure) and placing brand information on real-world and virtual objects
that consumers interact with are both ways to influence consumer behaviour. Transformational
advertising affect consumer -> placing brands onto objects under consumer control could transfer
cultural values and affect to consumer even if brand isn’t used or consumed in traditional sense.
Consumer performance may be affected by transformative experience of brand’s advertising.
Interactive media (video games) represent ideal context to explore potential for double-sided effects of
brand exposure on consumer performance, because they allow for almost complete experimental
control over stimulus environment and can test objective performance without risk to study
participants. Games represent opportunity to test brand exposure effects without external goal-setting
task or manipulations, capturing natural and internally driven consumer behaviour (video game is
highly goal-driven and represent natural environment).
Methods and results
Study consisted of laboratory study of 70 participants in racing video game as stimulus environment to
explore double-sided effects of brand exposure on objective performance. Beverage category is used,
because it contains varied brand personality positions with high overall awareness of popular brands
and has relevant brand identities (speed, power, performance). Personality associations of Red Bull
suggest that Red Bull brand exposure may have positive and negative effects on performance (finish
race as fast as possible, pushing car to the limit, encourage to race too hard, pushing beyond their
limits -> crash, going off track) -> Red Bull brand exposure could serve as environmental trigger that
encourages faster and more aggressive racing -> double-edged effects on performance outcomes.
Game consisted of five brand cars: Coca-Cola, Guinness, Tropicana, Red Bull, and neutral car. Cars
were functionally identic and only differ in branded paint.
,Results:
Participants were motivated by game to perform well (finish quickly), and were aware of used
brand exposures. Red Bull was seen as more fast, aggressive, reckless, and daring than other
brands, but didn’t significantly differ on other personality dimensions.
Learning curve effect in race performance, especially in first two races -> learning effects are
controlled by normalized difference score.
There was no difference across ranking for four of five cars, but the distribution of the Red Bull
car is U-shaped -> Red Bull car is most likely to be an individual’s fastest or slowest car and is
only rarely the middle-performing car -> double-sided effect on performance. Red Bull
encourages participants to pursue a fast, aggressive racing strategy -> fast times for some
participants (consistent with identity of speed and power), but also decreased performance
due to increase in off-track time because of overaggressive driving strategies.
Effect of Red Bull on participant performance cannot be explained as form of direct brand
placebo effect, where exposure to brand activates prior experience with product -> indirect
effect of brand personality characteristics on consumer performance. Brand prime and
exposure were presented supraliminally, but effect of Red Bull brand exposure is happening
outside of conscious attention -> both behavioural response to environmental cue of brand
exposure and behavioural outcome are operating outside of conscious awareness.
Discussion
Consumers racing with Red Bull painted car performed faster or slower than they did in other branded
cars, because Red Bull’s personality associations pushed consumer to edge of their ability or beyond
their ability (higher off-track times). So, brand priming and exposure can have double-edged effect on
consumer behaviour -> brand identity associations create positive and negative effects on objective
consumer performance.
Future work may explore how the associative network process and the cultural transformation process
that are both likely at play for branded objects combine or interact in real-world and virtual brand
exposure scenarios.
Brand placement can affect consumer performance beyond traditional marketing metrics and highlight
need for increased work on brand exposure as brand placement replaces traditional advertising in
marketing campaigns.
Results extend prior literature on nonconscious brand exposure in three ways:
Study illustrates how brand exposure can exert double-edged effects on consumer outcomes
-> brand with strong personality position on certain dimensions can create positive and
negative effects on relevant consumer performance metrics.
Study shows that brand exposure can affect objective metrics beyond choice, self-expression,
and subjective performance measures.
Study adds to growing body of research illustrating how brands can impact consumer
behaviour whether exposure is subliminal, explicit, or implicit (Volvo with safety -> change in
risk profile of consumer).
Brand exposure effects are powerful for brands that are collocated with objects under user’s control in
interactive media environments.
Conclusion
Brand exposure can create double-edged outcomes on consumer performance, with positive and
negative effects arising from single set of brand identity associations. Double-edged effects of
branding on consumer performance could be increasingly important as ambient advertising and
product cobranding become more commonplace and amount of brand exposure increases in
consumers’ lives.
, Summary Consumer Behaviour ‘Article 2; Automatic Effects of Brand Exposure on Motivated
Behaviour: How Apple Makes You Think Different (Fitzsimons, Chartrand & Fitzsimons)’
Introduction
Brands have become ubiquitous in people’s lives -> important that research uncovers ways in which
brand exposure can affect behaviour, but few researches has addressed potential behavioural
consequences of brand exposure (inside or outside consumer decision-making context).
Behavioural priming in the social domain
Environmental cues can have powerful effects on behaviour. Most behavioural priming research has
focused on direct activation of mental construct via exposure to related words (priming with words
related to rudeness leads to rude behaviour), but more research is examining effects of environmental
cues encountered in everyday life (people primed with elderly walked more slowly). These behavioural
priming effects result from automatic processes requiring no efforts, intentionality, or awareness ->
primes are subliminal: effects can result even when participants are unaware of primes themselves.
Most prominent account of behavioural priming effects has emphasized the role of activated cognitive
constructs -> constructs associated with the primed representation guide behaviour through a direct
perception-behaviour link when people’s behaviour mirrors a perceived construct (mental
representation of elderly is linked to construct slow -> slow is also activated when people are primed
with elderly and leads to increased likelihood of behaviour due to links to behavioural representations).
Activated motivational constructs also play role in producing these effects, because goals are
represented mentally, can be activated by situational cues and then operate automatically to shape
behaviour (please mother by achieving -> priming makes goal to achieve active and leads to better
performance). When goal becomes active, means to achieving that goal also become active, which
then go on to shape behaviour -> primed goal caused increased performance.
Translation of behavioural priming from the social to the consumer domain
So, research has demonstrated the effects of exposure to social primes on behaviour, but article
investigate whether same kinds of behavioural priming phenomena can result from exposure to
consumer brands. Exposure to brands can shape decision-making within consumer setting (exposed
to low-end brand names (Wal-Mart) -> products of higher value and lower prestige are chosen).
Increase in frequency of exposure to brand -> increase in consumer’s tendency to choose that brand.
But previous research has been limited to exploring consequences of brand exposure for brand or
product choice.
Arguments for brands as behavioural primes (likelihood of obtaining behavioural priming effects from
exposure to everyday consumer brands):
1. Consumers perceive brands as being linked to human characteristics: brand exposure could
shape noncustomer behaviour via cognitive mechanisms -> brands may shape behaviour via
cognitively based processes such as the perception-behaviour link.
2. Brands may elicit goal-based priming effects, unlike cognitively based effects, which have
potential for greater impact, because their activation is last over time. Goals and motives play
important role in brand-behaviour relationships -> brands can represent desired qualities of
self (manliness -> Hummer). So, goal-relevant brands may acquire the ability to trigger ideal-
self goals and shape behaviour via associations with desired human qualities (Nike -> active
and confident -> motivational role for many people -> brand exposure could lead people to
pursue goals to be confident and active).
