Nike inspires us to “be like Mike”. Gillette has always told us that their razors are “the best a man can get”. And Apple has urged us to be creative and to “think different”.  

The list of examples goes on and on. Brands are often in the business of making themselves synonymous with special powers and attributes. And for many consumers, the brand acts as a kind of placebo effect. 

Research has found, for example, that when consumers are led to believe they are wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses, they report that it actually blocks the sun better (Amar et al 2011). When people are handed a generic golf driver and told it is Nike, they hit the ball further and more accurately (Garvey et al 2016). 

While these brand effects exist, additional research suggests that this impacts some consumers more than others. A study by Ji Kyung Park of the University of Delaware and Deborah Roedder John of the University of Minnesota suggests that the effect depends on the implicit self-theory. The implicit self-theory is the theory that the psychological attributes of an individual can or can’t be fixed. There are two parts of this theory: entity and incremental. 

Individuals who believe their personal qualities can’t be improved by themselves will depend on influences such as brands to enhance their performance. This is referred to as the entity theory. 

The opposite of the entity theory is the incremental theory. That is, people who feel they can self-improve by themselves, will not use brands as much as others who can’t. 

In three studies, Park and John explored the relationship between the incremental theory, brand use, self-efficacy, and performance. 

Methodology: Brand Performance and the Implicit Self-Theory 

Study 1: Brand and Task Performance. The researchers provided GRE test-takers with an MIT-branded pen. MIT is a well known, elite school, associated with intelligence. 

First, implicit self-theory was measured so the researchers knew which students were entity theorists and which were incremental. Secondly, the students were given a shortened version of the GRE test (30 minutes) with 15 easy questions and 15 hard questions to complete. 

Individuals who proved to be entity theorists performed better on the difficult questions when they used the MIT pen. There was no difference between MIT pen users and regular pen users for incremental theorists. Overall, incremental theorists also performed worst than entity theorists. 

Study 2: Expanding on Study 1. Study 2 expanded the first by using a different brand, image, and type of task. Participants were asked to look at new bottled water from Gatorade or Ice Mountain. Gatorade was used as the brand and Ice Mountain is the control because of Gatorade’s strong association with elite athletic performance. 

The participants drank water from either a Gatorade branded bottle or a plain cup (Ice Mountain) while exercising with a hand-grip. A counter recorded how many times the participants pressed on the hand-grip. The workout increased in difficulty as the participants pressed on the hand-grips. 

Entity theorists performed better during the higher intensity workout in the Gatorade group compared to the Ice Mountain group. Type of bottle did not influence performance for incremental theorists, and their performance was overall lower than entity theorists. 

Study 3: Underlying Mechanisms. Study 3 focused on the underlying mechanisms of only the entity theorists. The participants were asked to read articles but with varying content. One was about how Gatorade increases (or decreases) performance.

Then, they completed the same hand-grip task from study 2 but drank from a Gatorade cup. Once finished, they rated how confident they felt during the hand-grip tasks to measure self-efficacy. 

Entity theorists displayed higher self-efficacy and performance on the hand-grip task in the high brand effectiveness condition. Incremental theorists did not show a difference between conditions.

The Results and Implications of Brands and the Implicit Self-theory on Consumer Behavior 

Overall, these results suggest that individuals who do not believe they can self improve (entity theorists), may benefit in performance from using brands. 

According to this study, wearing Nike shoes can actually make you faster. However, results suggest a more nuanced picture: you have to be an entity theorist and feel unable to self-improve on your own to fully experience the effect. In other words, it’s not as always easy to “be like Mike”. 

Your Pop Neuro Consumer Behavior Insights: 

• Entity theorists are those who do not believe they can self improve on their own 

• Incremental theorists believe they can self improve 

• Performance can be improved using brands if the individual is an entity theorist

This is an exclusive, members-only post. To get access to more posts like this, sign-up for the Consumer Behavior Insights Magazine here

References

Amar, M., Ariely, D., Bar-Hillel, M., Carmon, Z., & Ofir, C. (2011). Brand names act like marketing placebos (No. dp566).

Garvey, A. M., Germann, F., & Bolton, L. E. (2016). Performance brand placebos: How brands improve performance and consumers take the credit. Journal of Consumer Research, 42(6), 931-951.

Park, J. K., & John, D. R. (2014). I Think I Can, I Think I Can: Brand Use, Self-Efficacy, and Performance. Journal of Marketing Research, 51(2), 233–247. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.11.053