How expertise congruency effect matters in celebrity/brand endorsements: Electrophysiological time course evidence

Celebrity/brand endorsement is omnipresent and has great influence on consumers. In the current study, the event-related potentials (ERPs) were utilized to explore the neural process underlying how expertise congruency effect matters in ads. Twenty-five participants (two excluded) were recruited to accept or refuse the brands (stimulus 2) endorsed by celebrities (stimulus 1) during a S1-S2 paradigm. Behavioral results indicated significant differences in the acceptance rates and reaction time, while ERPs component provided further insight into the cognitive processing: early conflicted perception and later memory recollection process. The results of ERPs showed that, when the celebrity is an athlete star, presenting a sport brand (AS, expertise congruity) triggered a less negative N2 and a larger LPP component compared to a leisure brand (AL, expertise incongruity) but not different with singer star (SS and SL, expertise neutrality). We suggested the N2 may reflect the conflict process of celebrity-brand, while the LPP may demonstrate the recollection process of expertise association in memory. Such findings implied that a more fluent processing (smaller N2 and larger LPP) and prominent performances could be obtained in an expertise congruity scenario, which deepened our understanding of expertise congruency effect in advertising.