BRAND NAMING: SOUND SYMBOLISM, BRAND PREFERENCE AND BRAND PERFORMANCE

Alina Duduciuc and Loredana Ivan

Studies and Scientific Researches. Economics Edition, 2014, issue 20

Abstract: The aim of this study is to highlight the importance of sound symbolism for Romanian marketing and advertising applied research. Previous research showed that the phonetic structure of brand name communicates its characteristics, i.e. it drives consumers to assess certain features and performance of the product. We assumed that when consumers encounter an unknown brand name, they automatically infer characteristics from the meaning conveyed by the sounds (e.g. phonemes). Therefore, we supposed that a brand name for a shampoo (artificially created on experimental purpose) containing back vowels is evaluated better by consumers when they compare it to another brand name with front vowels. Furthermore, we tested the influence of the stops and fricatives consonants in inferring certain attributes of product. To this end, fifty nine students (N=59) participated in a research based on questionnaire. The results revealed that subjects evaluated better the brand names containing back vowels than brand names with front vowel. No effect was obtained regarding the presence of stops and fricatives consonants in assessing the brand performance.

Keywords: brand; sound symbolism; advertising; social psychology; brand names (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bac:fsecub:14-20-23

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