CHICAGO, March 18 (UPI) -- Branding wisdom suggests identifiers like logos be associated with the product category, but a U.S. study found logos that people relate to are effective.
Market research from ACNielsen reports that nearly one-in-five table-wine brands introduced in the last three years feature an animal on the label -- something that goes against conventional branding wisdom.
"To our knowledge, this is the first experimental demonstration of the beneficial effects of unique visual identifiers that are not meaningfully related to the nature of the product," researchers Aparna A. Labroo of the University of Chicago, Ravi Dhar of Yale University and Norbert Schwarz of University of Michigan said in a statement.
In an experiment, participants first did a word jumble, searching for words related to dogs or cats. They then participated in an ostensibly unrelated study and were asked to rate a series of products. Those who did the dog word jumble rated dog shampoo higher, than those who had done the cat-related jumble.
The researchers said in the Journal of Consumer Research that consumers have an easier time processing images when they are already "primed," if they have already thought about the image earlier in an unrelated context or if they already associate the logo with something in their personal lives.
