SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE The effect of autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) messages on consumer brand perceptions and intentions Mauro Luis Gotsch 1 | Florian Gasser 2 1 Institute for Tourism and Leisure, University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons, Chur, Switzerland 2 Institute for Systemic Management and Public Governance, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland Correspondence Mauro Luis Gotsch, Institute for Tourism and Leisure, University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons, Comercialstrasse 19, Chur 7000, Switzerland. Email: mauroluis.gotsch@fhgr.ch Abstract For the past 10 years, a new genre of media content called ASMR has been growing rapidly in popularity. ASMR is described as a pleasurable tingling sensation usually trig- gered by different audio-visual signals, performed by so-called ASMRtists. These trig- gers have been shown to lead to increased parasocial identification with ASMRtists as well as a stronger commitment to their marketing messages. Yet so far, the effective- ness of ASMR marketing has not been directly compared to the effectiveness of typical influencer marketing. Using two consecutive 2  2 experiments among 408 consumers, this study compares the effect of a sponsorship message of two ASMRtists with two YouTube influencers. The results show that ASMR can be induced even by short, spon- sored messages and that it positively influences the perception of both the advertised brand and the ASMRtist presenting it. Hence, ASMRtists are suitable brand ambassa- dors for marketers looking to reach an underserved online community. 1 | INTRODUCTION Twelve years ago, a seemingly innocuous video titled “Cranial Nerve Test with Pat LaFontaine & Dr. James Kelly” went viral, climbing to 38 M views as of today. The video was posted by the “BrainLine” association, providing information for people affected by brain inju- ries. The video itself shows a doctor performing several simple tests on his patient—its purpose clearly to educate rather than to entertain. A few months later, YouTube and many other platforms would see thousands of re-enactments of these cranial nerve tests, mostly per- formed by people with no association to the medical field (Page, 2013). These re-enactments, together with videos of head mas- sages, meditations, and people eating close to a microphone or whis- pering positive affirmations, became the bedrock of what is known today as the “ASMR-Community” (Lopez, 2018; Page, 2013). The pseudo-scientific term ASMR, standing for “autonomous sen- sory meridian response”, was supposedly coined by Jennifer Allen (Richard, 2016) to describe the experience of “a tingling, static-like sen- sation across the scalp, back of the neck and at times further areas” of the body (Barratt & Davis, 2015, p. 1). It is triggered by a wide variety of audio and visual stimuli and “widely reported to be accompanied by feel- ings of relaxation and well-being” (Barratt & Davis, 2015, p. 1). Since then, a fast-growing community of so-called “ASMRtists” (spoken as ASM-artist) on YouTube and other video-sharing and streaming plat- forms has sprung up, with views for popular creators regularly number- ing in the millions (LaMotte, 2022; Lopez, 2018). In the US alone, the number of ASMRtists on Instagram grew from an estimated 701 in 2018 to 7129 full-time ASMRtists in 2022 (Agarwal & Kavali, 2023). In 2023, over 110 million hours of ASMR content were streamed and watched by an average of 12 0 664 daily live viewers (SullyGnome.com, 2023). Finally, an estimation of the fan website “ASMR University” reported the number of ASMR channels on YouTube in 2022 to be over 500 0 000 with about 2.5 million ASMR videos being featured on the platform—not counting shorts or unlabeled ASMR content (Richard, 2022). Despite the size of the phenomena, comparatively little research has been specifically devoted to the topic of ASMR content (Engelbregt et al., 2022, p. 1727). This might be due to its supposed overlap with similar phenomena such as flow (Barratt & Davis, 2015), frisson (Kovacevich & Huron, 2019), or synesthesia (Del Campo & Kehle, 2016) or due to its comparative newness. Like these Received: 29 November 2022 Revised: 25 April 2024 Accepted: 9 June 2024 DOI: 10.1002/cb.2370 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. © 2024 The Author(s). Journal of Consumer Behaviour published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. J Consumer Behav. 2024;1–15. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cb 1