BRAND AWARENESS - DIFFERENTIAL ROLES OF FITTINGNESS AND MEANINGFULNESS OF BRAND NAMES

Performed 3 experiments to assess the comparative influence of fittingness and meaningfulness on the 2 stages of brand awareness: the response learning of brand names and the learning of brand-product association. The use of a free-recall method in Exp. I and II revealed that only meaningfulness and not fittingness of brand names influence the response learning stage. Response learning was better for high meaningful than for low meaningful brand names. In Exp. III, an associative matching task was used to study the effects of meaningfulness and fittingness on the associative learning stage. Results suggest that while both the variables influenced the learning of brand-product association. it was fittingness of brand names that served as a better predictor of associative learning. Associative matching was better for the fitting than for the nonfitting brand names under both high and low meaningfulness conditions. Only in the restricted case of nonfitting brand names did meaningfulness influence associative learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1969 American Psychological Association.