How Brand Names Affect Consumer Perceptions: An Experimental Study on the Sound Symbolism of Foreign Brand Names

Abstract

In this study, two experiments utilizing sound symbolism were conducted to gain a deeper understanding of how the sounds and letter curvatures of a brand name evoke image associations among global consumers. The study applied the sound symbolism context and empirically tested the meanings that US and Vietnamese consumers associate with brand names using the Roman alphabet and the Korean writing system, Hangul. The results indicated that the criteria for recalling the word–shape association differed when a brand name was presented to American and Vietnamese consumers in Roman alphabetical form versus when it was presented in an unfamiliar foreign alphabet. When Roman alphabetical forms familiar to both American and Vietnamese consumers were presented, there was a tendency for letter curvatures and the associated shapes to match. When consumers were presented with letters and sounds in a foreign language, they tended to select a shape that corresponded to the sound characteristics of the given names. The influence of foreign letter shapes varied based on consumers’ native language and whether they had learned a foreign language. Only Vietnamese consumers who had learned Korean tended to match the shapes to Hangul letter curvatures, even for subtle differences in curvature.