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New brand logo design: customers’ preference for brand name and icon

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Abstract

Brand logos can provide affective reactions before any promotional activity is carried out. This is particularly relevant for start-ups that might not have the budget for branding activities. Extant research is predominantly based on theoretical models. By contrast, we adopted a customer-based approach with a novel methodology—multiple picture sorting—to investigate the most relevant characteristics that customers identify for differentiating novel logos, and compared them with existing theories. Ninety-three subjects were asked to classify unknown logos according to criteria of their choice. Most customers clustered logos into: (1) composed of brand icon and/or name and (2) coloured or black logos. We then used experiments to test whether the logo characteristics identified by customers make a difference in logos’ attractiveness. Results show that logos composed of an icon plus a brand name are perceived as significantly more attractive than logos made of one component only, and that black logos are perceived as more attractive than coloured logos. Thus, customers-identified logo characteristics can guide entrepreneurs in designing and selecting logos for novel brands. This study adds to current theory by showing that one of the most relevant logo characteristics—brand icon and/or name—has rarely been investigated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Media and Communications Management, University of St. Gallen, Blumenbergplatz 9, 9000, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Sabrina Bresciani & Paolo Del Ponte

Authors
  1. Sabrina Bresciani
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  2. Paolo Del Ponte
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sabrina Bresciani.

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On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and Figs. 9, 10.

Table 9 List of companies utilised as stimuli for the multiple sorting technique questionnaire (logos are not reported because of copyright)
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Table 10 Procedure for the creation of the experimental stimuli
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Table 11 (Colour online) Descriptive statistics for all logo design options (main experiment)
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Table 12 Descriptive statistics for all logo design options of the brand name typeface experiment
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Table 13 Significance testing of logo attractiveness for brand icon and name for the brand name typeface experiment
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Fig. 9
figure 9

The effect of logo typology on logo attractiveness for the brand name typeface experiment (with Big Caslon typeface)

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Fig. 10
figure 10

The effect of logo typology on logo attractiveness for the brand name typeface experiment

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Bresciani, S., Del Ponte, P. New brand logo design: customers’ preference for brand name and icon. J Brand Manag 24, 375–390 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41262-017-0046-4

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