LAUSR

This paper investigates the effect of brand name repetition on brand attitude in the context of a fictional text. Furthermore, it tests the moderating impact of brand familiarity, narrative transportation, and individual differences in need for cognition (NFC). Participants in an experiment read the full text of a real short-story, which featured the target brand. Brand name repetition and brand familiarity were systematically manipulated. The results show that brand name repetition affects attitude towards an unfamiliar brand and readers’ narrative transportation and NFC moderate this effect: Attitude towards the brand improves with repetition only when both transportation and NFC are relatively high. No effects were found for the familiar brand.