Analyzing ‘Spooky Action at a Distance' Concerning Brand Logos

Attractive brand logos and packaging elements are gaining more and more importance as decisive competitive advantages in a world flooded by stimuli. Based on the assumption that there exists a kind of collective knowledge beyond individual experience, the authors found that in respect to logos humans are more likely to respond to stimuli if many people in other parts of the world do or did know them, even though they personally are not consciously familiar with the logos. An improved favorability of 20% for original symbols versus comparable control symbols can be regarded as a solid competitive advantage. This benefit regarding brand logos was analyzed by means of latent class models. Additionally, the heterogeneity in the participant’s characteristics as well as the heterogeneity in the analyzed symbols were incorporated by means of random and fixed effects models. Furthermore, this effect was shown to be neither culture-specific nor linked to age, gender, level of extraversion, and education of the participants.

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