Book chapter
Paying More for Victoria than Tonya: The Moderating Effect of Brand Anthropomorphism on Phonetic Symbolism
Let’s Get Engaged! Crossing the Threshold of Marketing’s Engagement Era, pp 811-811
2016
Abstract
Women’s fashion items are frequently sold with women’s names (i.e. the Victoria dress); however, this trend does not occur in men’s fashion very often. When brands humanize the product by naming it with a person’s name (i.e. Lucky Jeans’s Lolita jeans), the brand is subtly anthropomorphized. Previous research finds that there is a universal positive effect for anthropomorphized brands. Additionally, previous literature also finds that there is a gender effect regarding the preference for the sounds of brands, where men like the sound of back vowels (o, a), and women like sound of front vowels (i, e). In a series of two experiments we find, consistent with previous literature, that women prefer brands with front vowels and that men prefer brands with back vowels in non-anthropomorphized ads. Conversely, the effect is reversed in anthropomorphized ads; we find that women prefer brands with back vowels and that men prefer brands with front vowels. We believe that the mechanism influencing this reversal is narrative transportation.
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Details
- Title
- Paying More for Victoria than Tonya: The Moderating Effect of Brand Anthropomorphism on Phonetic Symbolism
- Creators
- Brooke Reavey - Dominican UniversityYanliu Huang - Drexel UniversityTrina Larsen Andras - Drexel University
- Publication Details
- Let’s Get Engaged! Crossing the Threshold of Marketing’s Engagement Era, pp 811-811
- Series
- Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science
- Publisher
- Springer International Publishing; Cham
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Marketing
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85125258671
- Other Identifier
- 991019173441104721