Brand–Slogan Matching in a Cluttered Environment

Abstract

Slogans are generally considered to be useful in building brand equity. In today's cluttered environment, however, consumers often match slogans with brands other than the actual sponsoring brand. Still, research on slogans has mainly focused on slogan effects when the brand is given (for example, in controlled experiments). By using real slogans and brands, this study increases our understanding of how slogans work in the presence of several competing slogans and brands. It is found that mismatching of slogans and brands can be explained by the different memory processes used by consumers. The cued retrieval process generally leads to the correct brand being identified, whereas the constructive memory process is sensitive to memory distortions. However, constructive memory allows for a larger influence of the slogan on the brand than does cued retrieval. The study adds to research on slogans and on source identification. Suggestions on how to use slogans in a cluttered environment, such as creating annoying and irritating slogans or using variations of slogans, are given.

Keywords:

• Brands
• slogans
• source identification
• competitive interference
• constructive memory

Notes

1. Translation into English by the authors, in the questionnaire all slogans were in their original language.

2. We report the correlation coefficient rather than Cronbach’s alpha because our measure only consists of two items (cf. Verhoef, 2003, footnote 2).