In this article we examine a phenomenon known as sound symbolism, where the sound of a word conveys meanings. Specifically, brand names are composed of individual sounds called phonemes and we investigate how this phonetic structure of brand names affects a consumer's evaluation of products and their underlying attributes. We demonstrate that consumers use information they gather from phonemes in brand names to infer product attributes and to evaluate brands. We also demonstrate that the manner in which phonetic effects of brand names manifest is automatic in as much as it is uncontrollable, outside awareness and effortless.S ound symbolism, the linguistic process in which the sounds of a word provide cues about the word's meaning, is not a new phenomenon. Plato first described the effect in the dialogues of Cratylus, and authors throughout time have used the sounds in words to describe people (e.g., the miniature Lilliputians and the giant Brobdingnagians in Swift's Gulliver's Travels) and objects (e.g., the large, dangerous Bludgers, the big, round Quaffle, and the small, fast Golden Snitch in the Quidditch game in Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) represented by those words. When presented with fictitious or unfamiliar words, individuals consistently use sound symbolism to interpret meanings from the name about the referenced object (Jacobson and Waugh 1987;Sapir 1929). The effect is extremely well documented whether the tested individual's native language is English (Klink 2000(Klink , 2001, Chinese (Klank, Huang, and Johnson 1971;Lapolla 1994), or even Navajo (Sapir 1929). In fact, sound symbolism has been observed to exist in native languages in North America, Latin America, Asia, Australia, and Africa, as well as more developed languages such as English, Finnish, French, German, Modern Greek, and Japanese (for a complete discussion of these examples see Hinton, Nichols, and Ohala 1994). *Eric Yorkston is assistant professor of marketing, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0443 (e-mail: yorkston@marshall .usc.edu). Geeta Menon is Harold MacDowell Faculty Fellow and associate professor of marketing, New York University, New York, NY 10012-1126 (e-mail: gmenon@stern.nyu.edu). This article is based on the doctoral dissertation of the first author under the supervision of the second. The authors thank members of the dissertation committee, Adamantios Gafos, Eric Greenleaf, and Vicki Morwitz, for their helpful comments during the different stages of this project. The authors acknowledge the data collection assistance provided by Sucharita Chandran, Andrea Morales, and Manoj Thomas. In addition, the authors are especially grateful to the JCR editors, Dawn Iacobucci and David Mick, the associate editor, and three reviewers for their constructive feedback during the review process.Past research on sound symbolism has focused on two aspects: the range of the effect (i.e., its universality; Huang, Pratoomaraj, and Johnson 1969) and the aspects of meaning it affects (Klink 2000(Kl...

This research documents how implicit theories regarding personality traits (whether they are deemed fixed or malleable) affect consumer inferences about the malleability of a brand's personality traits and thus its ability to extend into new categories. In Study 1, we document how consumers who believe traits are malleable (incremental theorists) are more accepting of brand extensions than consumers who believe traits are fixed (entity theorists).These results hold whether implicit theories are measured or manipulated. In Study 2, we show how implicit theories affect consumers' perceptions regarding the flexibility of a brand's personality traits and not its physical traits. Study 3 reveals how consumers primed with different implicit theory orientations respond differently to varying degrees of change within a single trait. This study tests the limits of the effect as well as demonstrates the impact of utilizing primes embedded within standard marketing communication.KEYWORDS: brand extensions, brand personality, branding, implicit theories, marketing communications 3 Brands are widely considered the most important assets of a firm (Keller 1993). A significant part of a brand's value or brand equity comes from its contribution in launching new products (Smith and Park 1992). With the cost of introducing an entirely new brand often being prohibitively high, brand extensions represent a strategic tool marketing managers use to exploit that asset; it is estimated that as many as 8 out of 10 new product introductions are brand extensions (Ourusoff et al. 1992). Yet brands are complex entities,

No abstract

No abstract

Consumers’ postpurchase evaluations have received much attention due to the strong link between ratings and sales. However, less is known about how herding effects from reference groups (i.e., crowd and friends) unfold in online ratings. This research examines the role of divergent opinions, rater experience, and firm product portfolio in attenuating/amplifying herding influences in online rating environments. Applying robust econometric techniques on data from a community of board gamers, we find that herding effects are significant and recommend a more nuanced view of herding. Highlighting the role of rater experience, the positive influence of the crowd is weakened and friend influences are amplified as the rater gains experience. Furthermore, divergent opinions between reference groups create herding and differentiation depending on the reference group and the rater’s experience level. Finally, firms can influence online opinion through their product portfolio in profound ways. A broad and deep product portfolio not only leads to favorable quality inferences but also attenuates social influence. Implications for online reputation management, rating system design, and firm product strategy are discussed.