The Role of Logos in Building Brand Awareness and Performance: Implications for Entrepreneurs

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Entrepreneurial firms, organizations, and institutions use brand name, logos, slogans, jingles, brand characters/personalities, URL, signage, packaging, letterhead paperwork, and advertising to increase brand awareness as part of their external branding efforts. Brand logos are also seen on labels, promotion materials, trade dress and employee uniforms, distribution trucks, and business cards. These external branding strategies and tactics help firms build not only corporate identity and brand persona to differentiate themselves from competition, but also brand loyalty. Entrepreneurs can develop their brand's persona throughout years with guided and planned actions and in turn consumer responses to their brand. Herskovitz and Crystal (2010) state that brand persona is essential in driving continuity of overall brand message. They (2010, p. 21) add that brand persona is what makes difference in strong or weak brand associations. Consumers attach human like characteristics to brands based on their understanding of brand's values and behaviors. Logo is an important part of brand as signals brand character through a stylized treatment of company or brand name. It is like a signature of a person. Its main function is to remind brand and make sure that it remains at forefront of audience's thoughts (Herskovits and Crystal, 2010, p.21). Schecter (1993, p.33) defines logos as the official visual representation of a corporate or brand name, and essential component of all corporate and brand identity programs. Due to entrepreneurial importance of logos in consumer sentiments (positive or negative attitudes) and brand awareness, great amounts of investments are made because management expects that logos can add value to reputation of an organization (van Riel and van den Ban 2001, p. 428). Indeed, in 1994 over 3,000 new companies in United States spent an estimated total of $120 million to create and implement a new logo (Anson, 1998). Timmons (1999), however, points out that entrepreneurs work with minimal resources. Although theoretical assumptions and evidence from practice underline importance of logos in consumer perceptions of a company and its products (Schecter 1993) and their preference of brands, empirical research on added value of logos are limited (Green and Lovelock, 1994). In fact, impact of a logo's added value through its associations with brand awareness, consumer sentiments of a brand's logo, likelihood of brand purchase, and entrepreneurial organization's performance has not been researched in literature. Prior research did not pay much attention to logos. As brands become more similar and struggle to gain unique associations in presence of strong competitors, investigating correlation of brand and logo associations become critical. As brand association researchers mentioned, brands are focusing on trivial attributes for unique brand associations and losing core value of brand. Logos may help brands to avoid lose focus. They may act as cues to elicit stronger associations than mere attributes and help differentiate in presence of strong competitors. Boyle (2003) suggests that brand building efforts are more likely to succeed if associations are created based on personal identification rather than on abstract concepts. In support of this idea, Herskovits and Crystal (2010) suggests story-telling to build brand persona. In this study, authors develop a model that reflects effectiveness of logos on organizations' performance. Specifically, study examines logo brand awareness level of top 100 retailers, consumer sentiments of these retailers' logos, their prior shopping experience with retailer, purchase intentions, and relationship of these factors with organizations' performance. The following sections provide a review of relevant literature that substantiates proposed model, measurements and methodology to be used in a future empirical study, and discussions of entrepreneurial significance of findings from such research. …