Sound brand fit: A cross-modal study on perception of fit between sound logos, visual logos and brand

Abstract

This thesis study’s the fit between sound logo, visual logo and brand in a sound branding context. The cross-modal study is carried out on six Danish brands and their existing sound logos and visual logos. The objective of the study is two-fold: 1) To study how the constructs of likeability, recognition, affect, brand knowledge and brand attitude influence consumer’s perceived general fit in the modalities of audio, visual and audio-visual, and 2) to explore how the sound logo meaning and brand meaning fit correspondingly on a set of brand personality attributes. It is expected that a high perceived general fit will result in fewer differences between brand personality attributes. Likeability and recognition is found to influence respondents’ perceived general fit in the audiovisual modality, where the combination of sound logo and visual logo is exposed. For the attribute fit, two brands show high perceived general fit and corresponding few differences between brand personality attributes; another two brands show low perceived general fit and corresponding large differences between brand personality attributes; and two brands has respectfully low attribute fit and a high perceived general fit and medium attribute fit and low perceived general fit. The study also finds evidence that sound logos can fit with brands in more than one way. Depending on how perceived general fit and attribute fit are rated high or low, a sound logo can either support the brand meaning, add additional meaning to the brand, or devaluate the existing brand meaning. By comparing perceived general fit and attribute fit, the study find that the unconscious fit between sound logo meaning and brand meaning does not always correspond with a conscious rated perceived general fit. Hence, the two analyses provide complementary information to understanding a fit between sound logo and brand. When studying perceived fit in the future including an attribute fit measurement may provide fruitful insights to the results. The recognition values were surprisingly low in the Audio modality, where the sound logos are presented without the brand context. It raises the question if consumers in everyday life actually perceive sound logos as a representative for the brand; as a logo? Implications for companies and management of sound branding are discussed in the end of the paper.