NeuroChic: unraveling sustainable fashion advertising through brainwave insights

Despite extensive research on the effect of ad appeals on sustainable fashion consumption (Dhir et al., 2021; Grazzini et al., 2021; Legere & Kang, 2020; Rausch & Kopplin, 2021), reliance on explicit self-report measures limits understanding of consumers' implicit mental processes, leaving a gap in linking attitudes to real behavior (Hassan et al., 2016; Rausch & Kopplin, 2021). This study advances prior research by studying consumer brain responses to different types of sustainable fashion advertising content and how arousal can predict actual purchasing behavior. An electroencephalography (EEG) experiment with 40 participants will analyze the effects of sustainable fashion advertising appeals on consumer cognition, examining the distinctions between emotional and informative content, in line with Guitart & Stremersch (2021) definition. Self-reported measures of purchase intention towards the advertised products will be collected before and after exposure to the stimuli, and the responses will be compared with the EEG results to identify disparities between stated attitude and neural activity. Additionally, the correlation between the neural responses and actual purchasing behavior, measured by click-through rates in connection with the ads, will be investigated in a large population of 500 respondents in a consumer panel. Our findings should reveal that emotional and informative ads activate distinct brain regions, correlating with varied effectiveness in influencing consumer behavior. Emotional stimuli are likely to engage areas tied to affective processing, such as frontal alpha asymmetry. At the same time, informative content is expected to stimulate regions associated with cognitive processing and willingness to pay, like theta waves and the beta over alpha plus theta ratio, along with differences in gamma powers. Participants exposed to emotional ads are anticipated to self-report greater purchase intention toward sustainable fashion products compared to those exposed to descriptive ads. However, on a broader scale, ads featuring informative content are expected to drive higher real consumer behavior. The study´s results are expected to demonstrate EEG measures' superior predictive power over overstated preferences in understanding consumer behavior toward sustainable fashion campaigns. The results will contribute to emphasize the crucial role of tailored advertising to bridge the gap between attitude and behavior in sustainable fashion consumption. These insights can guide marketers and policymakers in crafting more impactful communication strategies and policies aligned with consumer values, promoting sustainable fashion adoption.