The Influence of a Brand Name's Association Set Size and Word Frequency on Brand Memory

The Influence of a Brand Name's Association Set Size and Word Frequency on Brand Memory

   

Joan Meyers-Levy

The Journal of Consumer Research

Vol. 16, No. 2 (Sep., 1989) (pp. 197-207)

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Brand names serve a variety of purposes for both consumers and advertisers. Perhaps their simplest function is to provide labels by which firms identify and promote their products and services to consumers (Friedman 1985). However, because brand names represent the rich configurations of symbols and meaning that are embodied by products (Levy 1979), they can also take on their own meaning and presence. Through their linguistic characteristics or associations, brand names can influence the product inferences and evaluations consumers form (Peterson and ross 1972). Moreover, firms with extremely memorable brand names (e.g., Coca0Cola, McDonalds) often regard the names as their most valuable asset because these labels provide immediate recognition and, often, acceptance of new products that maybe introduced under the brand name. Thus, a critical question is, what dimensions of a brand name make it memorable?

One intuitively reasonable thesis is that band name memorability might be enhanced when the name can be meaningfully related to many other concepts already stored in memory. In this article, the term association set refers to such groups of concepts that are meaningfully related to a target word or brand name. The logic underlying this view is that the abundant concepts associated with the brans name word provide rich networks of pathways for retrieving the name.