Consumer Response to Polysemous Brand Slogans

Abstract

Polysemous brand slogans have multiple meanings that may convey several product attributes. We build on extant research by suggesting that some consumers automatically access multiple meanings of a polysemous brand slogan, whereas others access only a single, immediately available meaning. A novel measure of automatic access to secondary meaning (the Secondary Meaning Access via the Automatic Route Test, or SMAART) is developed to capture this individual difference and show its consequences for consumer responses to polysemous slogans with unfavorable secondary meanings. The automatic-access account is further validated by employing the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz), suggesting that the unconscious impact of polysemous brand slogans can be more influential than intuitively expected. (c) 2007 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Implicit measures of consumer cognition: A review

“…In other words, a TV viewer exposed to a commercial for Jackson Hewitt's tax preparation service may be unaware that the ad's slogan ("Get more in return") has triggered an automatic processing of its multiple meanings, that the secondary meaning has been accessed and comprehended, or that an ad hoc perception has emerged according to which this tax service is simultaneously perceived as more affordable and better at getting deductions. In fact, that is precisely what Dimofte and Yalch (2007a) found in their research on polysemous (i.e., multiple-meaning) brand slogans. For a cellular phone provider that employed the slogan "Raising the Bar" to effectively convey two brand-favorable information cues (i.e., superior service relative to competitors and more signal bars when using the company's network), many consumers unexpectedly had more negative attitudinal responses to the brand than did those in a control group exposed to the slogan "Redefining the Best."…”

“…However, an IAT juxtaposing the respective cellular provider with a direct competitor using the evaluative categories affordable and expensive uncovered novel automatic associations between the advertised brand and perceptions of expensiveness. While certainly inadvertent and unintended on the part of the marketer, consumers apparently implicitly accessed a negative secondary meaning of the brand slogan, according to which they perceived that the firm raised the bar in terms of jacking up the prices it charged for its high-end service (Dimofte & Yalch, 2007a).…”

Yes They Can An Empirical Study on the Effect of Slogans in Brand Awareness

“…One group regards the desirable characteristics slogans should have [8], [4], [16], [29], [20], [30], [3], [21], [10]. The other group concerns the effects of slogans on individuals, specially consumers [18], [8], [34], [13], [5], [28], [27], [6], [22], [9], [29], [14], [30], [11], [23]. The respective main findings of the second group are summarized in Table 1.…”

Do Brands "JUST DO IT"? Studying the Effectiveness of B2C Slogans

“…Katz and Rose (1969) also found that there is a significant incorrect recall for slogans, especially in heavily advertised markets with products lacking differentiation. Rosengren and Dahlén (2006) mention that mismatching of slogans and brands can be explained by the different memory processes utilized by individuals, and the study of Dimofte and Yalch (2007) pointed that the unconscious impact of polysemous brand slogans might be more influential than intuitively expected. Those authors also found that individuals with high automatic access had stronger implicit connections between the advertised brand and the negative feature involved in the secondary meaning than the individuals with low automatic access.…”