Anthropomorphic responses to new-to-market logos

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Anthropomorphic responses to new-tomarket logos Collin R. Payne A. Huhmann

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, Michael R. Hyman

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, Mihai Niculescu

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& Bruce

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New Mexico St at e Universit y, USA Version of record f irst published: 25 Feb 2013.

To cite this article: Collin R. Payne , Michael R. Hyman , Mihai Niculescu & Bruce A. Huhmann (2013): Ant hropomorphic responses t o new-t o-market logos, Journal of Market ing Management , DOI: 10. 1080/ 0267257X. 2013. 770413 To link to this article: ht t p: / / dx. doi. org/ 10. 1080/ 0267257X. 2013. 770413

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Journal of Marketing Management, 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2013.770413

Anthropomorphic responses to new-to-market logos

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Collin R. Payne, New Mexico State University, USA Michael R. Hyman, New Mexico State University, USA Mihai Niculescu, New Mexico State University, USA Bruce A. Huhmann, New Mexico State University, USA Abstract To examine design antecedents and consumer responses to ascriptions of anthropomorphic features for logos, we applied a best-practices conceptual framework to evaluate 120 US collegiate sports logos. Data collected from three logo experts and 119 consumers indicate that (1) processing fluency mediates the relationship between elaborateness and all logo personality dimensions, and (2) ascriptions of aggressiveness (negatively) and activeness (positively) influence consumer affect and purchase intentions. These findings imply that universities should benefit from brand management informed by anthropomorphic ascriptions to their sports logos. Possible future research could consider the effect of sports logo elements (i.e. colour, parallelism, symbolic meaning) on yet-to-be-assessed anthropomorphic ascriptions. Keywords anthropomorphism; animism; logos; personality; purchase intent; logo design; sports

Introduction Consumers may anthropomorphise – attribute human-like characteristics to – the logos of collegiate US football and basketball teams, which frequently depict animals, objects, spokes-characters, and stylised letters. Would such ascriptions influence consumers’ affect and purchase intentions for associated services (such as gameday attendance) and emblazoned goods (such as a team jacket or t-shirt)? As goods adorned with US collegiate logos alone yield $4.0 billion in annual sales (Collegiate Licensing Company, 2011), possible anthropomorphic responses to sport logos are important to universities, professional sports teams, and researchers. Nonetheless, marketing scholars have disregarded anthropomorphic responses to logos – the few notable exceptions notwithstanding (i.e. Aggarwal & McGill, 2007; Brown, 2010). The more readily people can anthropomorphise a stimulus, the more they like it (Aggarwal & McGill, 2007). To reduce uncertainty by increasing perceived familiarity, people often attribute human-like characteristics to a novel stimulus (Waytz & Morewedge, 2010). Hence, consumers may anthropomorphise a logo by ascribing personality characteristics to it. © 2013 Westburn Publishers Ltd.

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Anthropomorphism may partially explain the effect of logo design elements on meaning creation (Bardone, 2011; Henderson, Cote, Leong, & Schmitt, 2003; Mithen & Boyer, 1996). Logos include three universal design elements – elaborateness, naturalness, and harmony – that drive consumer affect (Henderson & Cote, 1998; van der Lans et al., 2009a). Although logo meaning only relates weakly to these design elements (Henderson et al., 2003), it relates strongly to positive affect and purchase intentions for logo-associated services or logo-emblazoned goods (Janiszewski & Meyvis, 2001; Schechter, 1993). Drawing from the literature on inferred personality characteristics and consumer responses (Didier & Lombart, 2010; Freling & Forbes, 2005a; Malar, Krohmer, Hoyer, & Nyffenegger, 2011; Venable et al., 2005), we examine how design elements affect logo meaning. Specifically, we assess anthropomorphism vis-à-vis logo personality within a ‘best practices’ framework that portrays anthropomorphism as an ensuant of logo design elements and antecedent of consumer affect and purchase intentions (Aaker, 1997; Geuens, Weijters, & Wulf, 2009; Henderson & Cote, 1998; Henderson et al., 2003; van der Lans et al., 2009a). The framework suggests universal design elements that influence people’s attributions and subsequent responses to logos. Our exposition proceeds as follows. First, we introduce an adapted framework (van der Lans et al., 2009a) that relates logo design elements to logo personality attributions. Second, we describe each component of the framework, emphasising anthropomorphism’s potential contribution. Third, we describe the evaluation of all 120 major US collegiate football team logos (Bowl Championship Series, 2011), initially by three US-based logo design experts and subsequently by a sample of Australian adults – a group queried to minimise confounding caused by respondents’ knowledge of and emotions towards the universities and their programs. Finally, we report findings and discuss logo design implications for ascriptions of anthropomorphic characteristics and their effect on consumer response.

Background Figure 1 shows a schema for relating anthropomorphism – via logo personality – to logo design, consumer affect, and purchase intentions. This schema is adapted from frameworks delineating consumers’ affective responses to universal logo design elements (Henderson & Cote, 1998; van der Lans et al., 2009a). Unlike current frameworks, however, this schema delineates the process by which design elements conduce meaning (i.e. through processing fluency and ascriptions of personality) and how this meaning influences consumer affect and purchase intentions. As researchers have used personality measures to assess attributions of human characteristics to a brand or a logo (Aaker, 1997), brand personality, whose foundations are anthropomorphic (Aaker, 1997; Belk, 1988; Delbaere, McQuarrie, & Phillips, 2011; Freling & Forbes, 2005a), should relate to logo design elements and consumers’ responses to them. Relationship between logo design elements and logo personality Three logo design dimensions – elaborateness, naturalness, and harmony – are generally accepted as universal (Henderson & Cote, 1998; Henderson et al.,

Payne et al. Anthropomorphic responses to new-to-market logos

Figure 1 Conceptual framework for relating anthropomorphism to logos. Logo Personality (Anthropomorphism)

Logo Design

ELABORATENESS - Complexity - Activeness - Depth

Mediator

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HARMONY - Symmetry - Balance

Customer Response

Processing Fluency

NATURALNESS - Represent ativeness - Organicity - Roundness

RESPONSIBILITY

ACTIVITY AGGRESSIVENESS

Affect Purchase i ntentions

SIMPLICITY

EMOTIONALITY

Controls Perceived familiarity

2003; van der Lans et al., 2009a). Elaborateness is a logo’s ability to capture something’s essence through the structural properties of complexity, activeness, and depth. Complexity entails (1) the number and variety of design elements, and (2) the difficulty in grouping those elements into patterns or units (Berlyne, 1960, 1974; Henderson & Cote, 1998; Huhmann, 2007; Veryzer & Hutchinson, 1998); activeness entails perceptions of motion; and depth entails perspective or three-dimensionality (Henderson & Cote, 1998). Naturalness means a logo is more representational and less abstract, with a more organic/irregular, less geometric, and rounder shape (Henderson & Cote, 1998; van der Lans et al., 2009a). Harmony is the degree to which the arrangement or pattern of design elements is congruent, balanced, and symmetrical (Henderson & Cote, 1998). Harmony correlates positively with affect (Berlyne, 1960, 1974; Huhmann, 2007). A congruently designed object has a unity that people find aesthetically appealing; in contrast, an incongruently designed object creates conflict that lengthens people’s reaction time to it (Veryzer & Hutchinson, 1998). Greater complexity, activeness, depth, naturalness, and conflict increase cognitive resource demands, which boost processing at moderate levels but decrease it at higher levels (i.e. an inverted-U function; Berlyne, 1960, 1974; Huhmann, 2007). Regardless of designers’ explicit attempts to include (or exclude) anthropomorphic features, the aforementioned design dimensions can induce people to ascribe personality traits to logos. The mechanism for this ascription, which is uncertain, may be processing fluency (Song & Schwartz, 2009). Processing fluency – the ease of comprehending a stimulus – relates to stimulus clarity and familiarity because people attribute this fluency to actual or imagined prior exposure (Labroo & Lee, 2006; Whittlesea, 1993).

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People are less able to associate pleasant experiences with logos perceived as abstract, irregular, unnatural, or asymmetric (Janiszewski & Meyvis, 2001). In contrast, logos with harmonious designs should lend themselves to positive associations (Freling & Forbes, 2005b; Lee, 2004). Hence, personality ascriptions may ensue when design elements foster interpretative ease. Thus: H1 : Processing fluency mediates the relationship between the design of a logo and personality ascriptions to that logo.

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Consequences of logo personality relationship Five personality dimensions – responsibility, activity, aggressiveness, simplicity, and emotionality (Geuens et al., 2009) – may induce positive/negative affect and purchase intentions. For example, attributions of brand excitement, sophistication, extraversion, and openness relate strongly to positive consumer affect and purchase intentions (Freling & Forbes, 2005b; Miller, 2008; Sung & Kim, 2010). Analogous to interpersonal relationships, people may attribute personality traits to a logo they find either enjoyable or unpleasant (Saucier, 2010). Thus: H2 : Ascriptions of personality to a logo relate to viewers’ affect towards that logo and purchase intentions for logo-associated products.

Method Participants and procedure Design experts Three US-based graphic design experts – a senior art director, an advertising agency owner, and a marketing director – were contacted and offered remuneration to participate in an online survey about all 120 major US collegiate football team logos, which typically represent all sports coordinated by a given university’s athletic department. (In fact, none of the logos includes football-specific imagery). Unlike recent empirical studies, this logo set contains naturally occurring polychromatic – rather than artificially derived monochromatic – stimuli (Henderson & Cote, 1998; van der Lans et al., 2009a). Furthermore, by representing providers within a single product category, intended variation in brand meaning (Batey, 2008) is minimised as a confound because all collegiate football team logos would reinforce similar meanings (e.g. strength). In contrast, the logos for a snack food producer and a microprocessor manufacturer might differ in accord with efforts to promulgate dissimilar brand images. These experts received an e-mail directing them to the survey website, where they initially received a consent form detailing the goal of the study. After reading the form, all experts agreed to participate. Then, they rated all 120 logos – presented in random order – on seven design dimensions, which were defined and portrayed with high and low exemplars to facilitate logo evaluation (per Henderson & Cote, 1998). Upon questionnaire completion, which took between two and three-and-a-half hours, the experts were thanked for their cooperation.

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Consumer panellists Australian consumer panellists were solicited to participate in an online survey about university sports logos. As most Australians are unfamiliar with US universities and their sports logos, it is unlikely that previous exposure to university logo-brand associations – not of interest in this study – would confound their evaluations. In addition, Australian respondents should be similar to the targeted audience for these logos (i.e. US collegiate football fans) because they (1) evaluate brand personality and logo design elements similarly (Smith, Graetz, & Westerbeek, 2006; Sweeney & Brandon, 2006; van der Lans et al., 2009a), and (2) share cultural backgrounds that could influence logo evaluations, such as uncertainty avoidance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, and language/writing systems (van der Lans et al., 2009a). Consumer panellists were recruited and selected based on their current residency and citizenship status (i.e. Australia) as well as age (i.e. ≥18 years old). Panellists received an e-mail directing them to a survey website, where they were asked to consider a consent form that detailed the goal of the study, which was to understand how people evaluate university sports logos. After reading the form, 119 panellists (52% female), ranging in age from 18 to 64 years (M = 28 years), agreed to participate. As an incentive, respondents earned a chance to win a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate or points towards product premiums available to panellists. After answering 31 closed-ended questions about 24 logos, respondents answered several demographic and psychographic questions and were thanked for their participation. To reduce response fatigue, respondents were queried about only 24 (20%) of the 120 logos. Specifically, each football team logo was assigned randomly to one of five subsets, with one subset assigned randomly to each respondent. To avoid order bias, the logos within each subset were presented in random sequence. Each logo dimension was evaluated no fewer than 16 or no more than 29 times (M = 24 evaluations; see van der Lans et al., 2009a, for a similar procedure). Typically, respondents completed the questionnaire within 30 to 45 minutes. Logo evaluation instruments Logo design characteristics Consistent with research on experimental aesthetics, single-item ratings on various structural properties were obtained for multiple stimuli (e.g. Berlyne, 1974; Henderson & Cote, 1998). The definitions and procedure are similar to ones used in prior studies of logo design elements (Henderson & Cote, 1998; van der Lans et al., 2009a) that specify design experts responding to different questions than consumers. After viewing definitions and sample logos exemplifying high and low levels of each design element, design experts rated all 120 logos on the following design elements (using a seven-point scale anchored by 1 = ‘strongly disagree’ to 7 = ‘strongly agree’): is active, has depth, is symmetrical, has balance, is organic, is representative, and is round. An additional design element – complexity – was evaluated by consumers rather than design experts (as per van der Lans et al., 2009a). Reliabilities for scales based on experts’ evaluation of the three logo design dimensions (Henderson & Cote, 1998; Henderson et al., 2003; van der Lans et al., 2009a) are acceptable. The alpha for the elaborateness scale – comprised of

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complexity, activeness, and depth items – is .77; the alpha for the naturalness scale – comprised of representativeness, organicity, and roundness items – is .88; and the alpha for the harmony scale – comprised of balance and symmetry items – is .71. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed the three-dimensional logo design solution observed in prior studies (Henderson & Cote, 1998; Henderson et al., 2003, van der Lans et al., 2009a). Perceived logo familiarity

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Consumer panellists rated perceived logo familiarity on a seven-point semantic differential scale (anchored by 1 = ‘familiar’ to 7 = ‘unfamiliar’), which is consistent with established ‘best practices’ logo evaluation methodology (Henderson & Cote, 1998; van der Lans et al., 2009a). Logo personality measure Given Australian panellists’ unfamiliarity with US collegiate football brands, any brand personality scale should capture brand impact sans the meaning induced by brand-related communications. In other words, such a scale should measure consumers’ raw responses to graphical logo elements. Hence, the terms brand personality and logo personality are interchangeable in this context (Henderson et al., 2003). Consumers assessed logo personality with a seven-item scale adapted from Geuens et al. (2009). The scale – which focuses on brand/logo personality attributes that reflect human personality and corresponds to the Big Five personality factors – delivers a superior, yet concise, assessment of anthropomorphism. Following the word stem ‘Please indicate the extent to which the following are characteristic for the above logo’, respondents initially rated 12 personality items associated with the five personality dimensions of responsibility, activity, aggressiveness, simplicity, and emotionality. These 12 items were rated on a seven-point scale ranging from ‘Not characteristic for the logo at all’ (1) to ‘Very characteristic for the logo’ (7). Notwithstanding prior reports of cross-cultural validity, the personality dimensions required further refinement via confirmatory factor analysis. Elimination of items with poor loadings (