for their help in creating some of the stimuli used in this article. Chris Janiszewski served as associate editor for this article.

This research investigates the influence of incomplete typeface logos on consumer perceptions of the firm. In these logos, parts of the characters in the company name are intentionally missing or blanked out, giving rise to a form of perceptual ambiguity. Three studies demonstrate that although incomplete typeface logos have an unfavorable influence on perceived firm trustworthiness, they have a favorable influence on perceived firm innovativeness. The former influence is tied to the logo's perceived clarity, while the latter influence is tied to its perceived interestingness. Furthermore, incomplete typeface logos have an unfavorable influence on overall attitude toward the firm, but only for consumers with a prevention, rather than promotion, focus. These findings suggest that firms should avoid incomplete typeface logos if perceptions of trustworthiness are critical or if consumers are likely to have a prevention focus. However, such logos may be successfully employed with promotion-focused consumers, and they may be used as a tool to position a firm as innovative.

This research proposes a feelings-based account of brand extension evaluation and demonstrates that the promise of pleasure (hedonic potential) associated with luxury brands is a key driver of brand extendibility. In four studies, we contrast a luxury brand with a value brand. Both brand concepts lead to equally favorable brand evaluations, but the luxury brand concept results in more favorable brand extension evaluations due to the hedonic potential inherent in this concept. However, the luxury brand is shown to be sensitive to inconsistent brand cues, leading to diminished hedonic potential and consequently decreased brand and brand extension evaluations.

A recent study showed that people evaluate products more positively when they are physically associated with art images than similar non-art images. Neuroimaging studies of visual art have investigated artistic style and esthetic preference but not brain responses attributable specifically to the artistic status of images. Here we tested the hypothesis that the artistic status of images engages reward circuitry, using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during viewing of art and non-art images matched for content. Subjects made animacy judgments in response to each image. Relative to non-art images, art images activated, on both subject-and item-wise analyses, reward-related regions: the ventral striatum, hypothalamus and orbitofrontal cortex. Neither response times nor ratings of familiarity or esthetic preference for art images correlated significantly with activity that was selective for art images, suggesting that these variables were not responsible for the art-selective activations. Investigation of effective connectivity, using time-varying, wavelet-based, correlation-purged Granger causality analyses, further showed that the ventral striatum was driven by visual cortical regions when viewing art images but not non-art images, and was not driven by regions that correlated with esthetic preference for either art or non -art images. These findings are consistent with our hypothesis, Corresponding author: K. Sathian, Department of Neurology, Emory University School of Medicine, WMB-6000, 101 Woodruff Circle, Atlanta GA 30322, USA, Tel: 404-727-1366, Fax: 404-727-3157, krish.sathian@emory.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptNeuroimage. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2012 March 1.

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