ON THE SEARCH FOR THE PERFECT BRAND NAME
UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE, COLOGNE, GERMANY
A brand name is a powerful tool for shaping consumers’ attitudes toward a product (Brucks, Zeithaml, & Naylor, 2000; Rao & Monroe, 1989), particularly in the currently exploding ecommerce domain and in digital marketing (Degeratu, Rangaswamy, & Wu, 2000). For instance, Mazursky and Jacoby (1985) found that consumers use the brand name more frequently than any other information as a cue for judging the quality of a product, and the brand has been shown to be an even more important prompt for quality assessments than the price (Olson, 1976; Stokes, 1974).
Brand names are worth a lot because they have strong reputational associations. In actuality, most effects of the brand are due to reputation the brand has gained (De Chernatony, 1999; Selnes, 2013; Wheeler, 2003). But what about the initial encounter of a novel brand? Are there ways to prompt spontaneous favorable attitudes toward a name without prior experience or additional information? Exploring such name-specific sources of spontaneous attitudes is the purpose of this chapter. In this vein, the reviewed evidence will not only be limited to actual brand names, but will also deal in large parts with spontaneous attitudes toward person and company names. Still, since the underlying psychological principles in spontaneous attitude formation toward a word remain the same, research on the perception of person and company names also inform us about the principles of brand name perception.
Thus, the question of this chapter is whether we can shape (brand) names in a way that makes them initially more appealing in order to increase the likelihood that consumers would choose the bearer of that name. An obvious route to trigger positive attitudes toward a brand or product name at first sight is surely its semantic meaning: the name should contain or be similar to positive and product-relevant concepts. An insurance company might choose the name Protective Life, or a food processor Triumph Foods (these are all actual names of existing companies). However, in our world of ever newly arising digital companies and explosion of start-up foundings, the number of available meaningful names decreases everyday, for which reason more and more companies choose artificially created nonsense words as brand and product names.
There are indeed more subtle and indirect tools available to cue favorable attitudes at first sight or reading. And these routes lie in linguistically superficial features of names. What I mean here by superficial features, are the features of a word that are not semantically relevant, that is, not at all structurally related to their meaning itself and thus arbitrary in the Saussurian notion of linguistics (de Saussure, 1916; for recent reviews, see Gasser, 2004; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999; Monaghan, Christiansen, & Fitneva, 2011). Such features are the length of a word, or its sound for instance: they do not have a structural correspondence with the meaning of the word. It is not the case that longer words denote longer things (e.g., YEAR vs. MILLISECOND), nor that soft things have soft-sounding names (e.g., SILK vs. BARBWIRE).
Recently, in various lines of research from different fields of psychology and consumer behavior analysis evidence has been accumuled that such superficial features of names do influence attitudes toward the name bearers, may these be companies, products, or persons. In this chapter, I will review these new developments starting with obvious superficial features, namely the complexity and the sound of a name. Then, a much larger part will be devoted to a more subtle feature of words, namely the mouth movements that are required for articulation, and how they shape spontaneous attitudes toward the name bearer. We can encounter (brand) names either visually, as for instance on the supermarket shelf or in internet ads, or auditorily, as for instance in radio commercials. And indeed, there is research on differences between reading or hearing a brand name (e.g., Bryce & Yalch, 1993; Topolinski, Lindner, & Freudenberg, 2014). However, most of the presently reviewed evidence stems from visual presentation of (brand) names, since, as we will learn, hearing a name spoken is not even necessary to evoke effects such as sound symbolism (see next).
Word Complexity
One important superficial feature of a word is its complexity, which is determined by features such as a word’s length or pronounceability (Topolinski, Erle, & Bakhtiari, 2016). Whether a word is long or short has nothing to do with what it denotes, it is surely not the case that physically or temporally longer things bear longer words. Also, whether a word is easy or hard to pronounce should not show a systematic relation to its meaning. Still, recent results in experimental psychology have shown that these semantically irrelevant features do play a role in word perception and attitude generation, with complexity of brand or person names being a strong heuristic used in consumer decisions (Irmak, Vallen, & Robinson, 2011; Maheswaran, Mackie, & Chaiken, 1992; see Vanhuele, Laurent, & Dreze, 2006, for effect of verbal length of prices). These effects are reviewed in the following.
Effects of Mere Pronounceability
As one of the first demonstrations, Alter and Oppenheimer (2006) showed in real-world data that the pronounceability of the ticker codes of shares determines the price development of these shares, with easy-to-pronounce codes (such as KAR) leading to higher prices than hard-to-pronounce codes (such as KDR). Also, Song and Schwarz (2009) showed that ostensible food additives were rated as more harmful when they bore a relatively hard-to-pronounce name (such as HNEGRIPITROM) than a relatively easy-to-pronounce name (such as MAGNALROXATE). These effects are not constrained to company or product names, but also affect the social perception of target persons. Laham, Koval, and Alter (2012) found that target persons with easier-to-pronounce names are judged more positively (Experiments 1–4), and that even in real-world data people with easier-to-pronounce surnames occupy higher status positions in law firms. Also, Newman et al. (2014) found that claims made by target persons with easy-to-pronounce names are believed more likely than claims made by target persons with hard-to-pronounce names.
Pronounceability and Length of Digital Usernames
Most recently, Silva and Topolinski (2016b) explored the impact of word complexity in the digital consumer domain, using eBay as an example where superficial features of words, namely of the usernames of the sellers, play a role for consumer attitudes (cf., Irmak et al., 2011; Maheswaran et al., 1992). They presented participants with screenshots of ostensible eBay profiles of sellers and asked participants how trustworthy they feel the seller to be. Besides random information, these profiles contained the names of the sellers and their reputation, in the form of number of stars they had gained in recent ratings. Crucially, the name of the seller was either a simple (e.g., SIBU), moderate (e.g., PTONBIA), or complex (e.g., VLEGTIQCLAPL) name. Additionally and orthogonally to this name complexity manipulation, the sellers either had a good or bad reputation in the star reputation system. As a result of these manipulations, participants of course rated sellers with a good reputation as being more trustworthy than sellers with a bad reputation. However, in addition and independent of actual reputation, participants also rated sellers with simple names as being more trustworthy than sellers with moderate names, and the latter as being more trustworthy than sellers with complex names (Silva & Topolinski, 2016b, Experiments 1–2). This linear pattern of decreasing trustworthiness with increasing seller name complexity occured significantly for sellers with both high and low reputation.
Moreover, Silva and Topolinski (2016b, Experiments 3–7) isolated two independent determinants of word complexity, namely the length of a word, and its pronounceability, and manipulated these two factors independently from each other (see also Topolinski, Erle, & Bakhtiari, 2016). More specifically, they presented participants with ostensible eBay profiles with good and bad reputations and with usernames that were easy-to-pronounce and short (eg., BATREK), hard to pronounce and short (e.g., EAKRTB), easy-to-pronounce and long (e.g., FECHLIREN), and hard to pronounce and long (e.g., IECLHFRNE). As a result, each of these manipulations had its own independent main effect on trustworthiness ratings. Besides reputation of course, shorter names were trusted more than longer names, and easy-to-pronounce names were trusted more than hard-to-pronounce names, without any interaction between these factors.
These effects of word complexity even persisted when participants were made aware of the variations in word length and pronounceability and were explicitly instructed to ignore these features (Silva & Topolinski, 2016b, Experiment 4). Also, the impact of word complexity was not moderated by participants’ beliefs about the sellers geographical background, since for both ostensible Polish and ostensible German sellers these effects occurred (Experiment 5); and they even occurred when participants received the information that not the sellers themselves, but an automatic username generation algorithm had compiled the usernames (Experiment 6). Also, participants’ beliefs about the age of the seller account did not explain these effects, since for both ostensibly ten year and one year old accounts more complex usernames damaged trustworthiness (Experiment 7).
Besides the orthographic complexity of a word, there are more subtle features of words that nevertheless influence people’s perception of the name bearer, which is reviewed in the following.
Sound Symbolism
Another superficial feature of words is their sound. That the sound of a word can play a role for the meaning or the perception of a word is already captured in the old idea of onomatopoeia (Perniss, Thompson, & Vigliocco, 2010), meaning that words can sound similar to what they denote (e.g., “cuckoo”). Deriving from this notion, in his classic study Köhler (1929) predicted that people would like a match between sound features of a word and features of the object that word denotes. He showed participants a curvy and a spiky object together with two names, namely BALUMA and TAKETE, and found that participants preferred the soft-sounding name BALUMA for the round object, and the harsh-sounding name TAKETE for the spiky object (for related effects, see Westbury, 2005; for the related kiki-bouba effect, see Maurer, Pathman, & Mondloch, 2006; Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001).
Such onomatopoeia effects are now a vividly explored phenomenon in the literature of sound symbolism, showing that matches between word sounds and denoted object features increase preference and consumer attitudes (e.g., Fitch, 1994; Hinton, Nichols, & Ohala, 2006; Klink, 2000; Kovic, Plunkett, & Westermann, 2010; Lowrey, Shrum, & Dubitsky, 2003; Shrum, Lowrey, Luna, Lerman, & Liu, 2012). I will only sketch one brief example here because this rich line of research is reviewed elsewhere in this volume (Chapter 17).
For instance, Lowrey and Shrum (2007) presented participants with word pairs that either featured front vowels, such as NILLEN or GIMMEL, which sound high-pitched and bear multi-modal associations with features such as small, fast, or sharp; or that featured back vowels, such as NALLEN or GOMMEL, which sound low-pitched and bear associations with features like large, slow, or dull. Participants were told that these words were brand names for certain products. These products, in turn, were either associated with the “high-pitched” features (i.e., small, fast, sharp), such as knife or a convertible, or with the “low-pitch” features (i.e., large, slow, dull), such as a hammer or a SUV. It turned out that participants preferred the front-vowel over the back-vowel brand names for the lighter and sharper products (knife, convertible), but the back-vowel over the front-vowel brand names for the heavier and slower products (hammer, SUV).
Thus, a word’s sound can affect consumer attitudes and should therefore be considered an important factor when searching for the right brand or product name. However, there are more superficial non-semantic features of words that can shape a speaker or reader’s attitude toward that word or its denoted object. An even more hidden feature is the mere mouth movements that are required to utter a word. Recent approaches have shown that also the form, biomechanical requirements, and patterns of these mouth movements have consequences on consumer behavior, which I will describe in detail in the following.
Mouth Movements
Although we execute them numerous times a day, the mere mouth movements that are required to utter a given word are rarely the object of our attention. Just utter the word MOUTH for yourself and observe what happens. First you press the lips together, then you open your mouth, form a round shape of your lips that gets smaller and smaller, and just before your lips would touch each other you stop and touch with the tip of your tongue your upper front teeth. Do this several times: isn’t this a peculiar circus of actions running in your mouth, a carnival you are rarely aware of? As we will see in the following sections, these movements can have tremendous indirect influences on people’s attitudes and moods, because they make people smile without them knowing (Rummer, Schweppe, Schlegelmilch, & Grice, 2014), they make things appear more or less distant (Maglio, Rabaglia, Feder, Krehm, & Trope, 2014), or they simulate swallowing or spitting movements and thereby induce positive and negative attitudes (Topolinski, Maschmann, Pecher, & Winkielman, 2014).
Importantly, such articulation movements already occur under silent reading. There is no need to utter words overtly to be affected by the mouth movements they require. This is because reading is so automatized that even during silent reading we covertly simulate articulation, in the form of so-called sub-vocalizations, as has been shown in experimental research (Stroop, 1935; Topolinski & Strack, 2009, 2010; see, for the more general notion of covert sensorimotor simulations, e.g., Barsalou, 1999; Foroni & Semin, 2009; Leder, Bär, & Topolinski, 2013; Sparenberg, Topolinski, Springer, & Prinz, 2012; Topolinski, 2010, 2012). Let’s have a look now at what mouth movements can do.
Why You Have to Say “Cheese!”
Some of our orofacial muscles are tied to the expression of certain emotions, such as the zygomaticus muscle being responsible for smiling and thus being positively associated (Cacioppo, Petty, Losch, & Kim, 1986). In turn, some phonemes draw on the activity of those muscles during articulation. One prominent case is the phoneme /i:/, as the vowel sound in the English word CHEESE. It is by no surprise that the strategy to make folks smile while taking a picture is to ask them to say “Cheese!”, because uttering this word activates the zygomaticus muscle, it literally makes people smile. Since the zygomaticus is in turn associated with positivity, it might be possible to induce positive feelings by uttering /i:/-containing words via facial feedback (Strack, Martin, & Stepper, 1988).
This hypothesis was the object of a recent experimental test by Rummer et al. (2014). They let participants read words containing either /i:/ vowels, which activate the zygomaticus muscle, or words containing /o:/ vowels, whose articulation inhibits activation of the zygomaticus muscle. It turned out that participants reported more positive mood after articulating /i:/-than /o:/-words (for an earlier related demonstration, see Zajonc, Murphy, & Inglehart, 1989). Thus, articulation movements can affect emotion-related muscles and thereby induce positive mood.
Voicedness and Gender Perception
Another muscle activity that is required in the articulation of some phonemes is activity of the vocal chord muscles, namely the feature whether a phoneme is voiced or not. For instance, while both letters require pressing the lips together, P is pronounced without voice, while B is pronounced with additionaly using your voice (to give other examples, T/K are unvoiced but D/hard G are voiced). This motor activity is not an actual mouth movement, but it is still a motor activity playing a role in articulation and being a superficial feature of words. Recently, Slepian and Galinsky (2016) demonstrated that the voicedness of the starting phoneme of names determines gender perception, with the pattern that voiced phonemes (which require vibration of the vocal cords, such as B or D) are more associated with male names, and unvoiced phonemes (which require no vibration of the vocal cords, such as P or T) are more associated with female names. This has strong implications for marketing and branding: if you want to activate male associations with a certain product, say a perfume, you should use voiced phonemes, while you should use unvoiced phonemes if the product shall radiate femaleness.
Close and Distant Letters and Concreteness of Mental Construal
Concerning vowels, some vowels require the tongue to lie back in the mouth, such as /o:/, they are called back vowels. On the other hand, other vowels require the tongue to be placed in the front of mouth, respectively, such as /i:/, they are called front vowels. Recently, Maglio et al. (2014) argued that front and back location of the tongue alters the psychological distance one adopts. Specifally, they argued that back vowels evoke abstract, high-level mental representations because they make the things we ponder seem more distant, while front vowels induce concrete, low-level mental representations because they make things seem closer. Supporting this claim, they found for instance that front vowels lead to higher precision in representing a fictitious city (Experiment 1). Participants received a map of a city, and this city bore a name either with front vowels (e.g., FLEEG) or with back vowels (e.g., FLOOG). After learning the name of the city, participants were asked to look over the map and to visually divide it into as many regions as made sense to them. It turned out that participants considering cities with names including front vowels divided their city into more regions than participants treating cities with back vowels, obviously because the former had a more concrete, low-level mental representation of the city than the latter. This highly fascinating finding shows that articulation movements can even influence the preciseness and concreteness of mental representations.
In a most recent line of different studies an even more hidden feature of articulation movements was explored. This currently emerging novel field has already accumulated so much evidence that I devote a whole section to it.
Oral Approach-Avoidance: Why EBOK is Better than EKOB
Speech production is not the only function of the mouth. The evolutionarily and also ontogenetically much earlier and more basic function of the mouth serves nutrition: the ingestion of foods and liquids and the expectoration of harmful substances (Duffy, 2007; Hejnol & Martindale, 2008; Rosenthal, 1999; Rozin, 1996). As we all know and experience numerous times every day, ingestion is done by moving desired nutritions from the lips over the tongue to the throat of the mouth to swallow them eventually. For instance, we take a sip from our coffee using our lips, let the coffee wander over our tongue to taste its aroma, and eventually move it with the back of our tongue down the throat. Obviously, these activities are muscle movements that systematically wander from the front to the back of the mouth, they wander inwards (Goyal & Mashimo, 2006). In contrast, expectoration takes the opposite way, it expels unwanted or even harmful substances from the throat or inner mouth over the tongue to the lips. For instance, we move a bitter substance with our tongue to the lips to spit it out. These expectorative activities wander outwards (Goyal & Mashimo, 2006). Given that ingestion obviously is more positive than expectoration (Rozin, 1996, 1999; Rozin & Fallon, 1987), one can assume that generally inward movements also feel more positive to individuals than outward movements. For instance, people would surely prefer swallowing movements over spitting movements.
And here comes the clue: such inward and outward movements can not only be triggered by real nutrition-related acts, but also more indirectly, namely via articulation. Consider the movements required for articulation and the spots where they take place. Particularly for consonants, every articulation takes place at a well-specified and narrow spot, using a very specific mouth movement (Ladefoged, 2001; Titze, 2008). For instance, for articulating P or B we press the lips together, and only the lips. Try to articulate P by using your lips and your front teeth, it will not work. Rather, this exercise will produce the consonant F. The consonant T is produced by tapping with the tip of your tongue against the front soft palate. If you, however, tap just a tiny bit more to the front, toward your front teeth, this will produce a TH instead of a T. As we see, every consonant has a very specified and narrowly located articulation spot (IPA, 1999).
When we map all the location spots of all consonants, we realize that they are located along the sagittal front-to-back axis of the mouth: while for instance B and P are produced in the front using only your lips, D, N, and T are produced in the middle using your front tongue, and K is produced in the back of the mouth by pressing the rear back of your tongue against the rear hard palate. What if we use this system to build words that actually feature consonant sequences whose articulation spots systematically wander inwards or outwards, respectively? For instance, for the word MENIKA the consonant articulation spots wander inward (lips, front tongue, back tongue), while for the word KENIMA they wander outward (back tongue, front tongue, lips). Because these articulation patterns resemble positive ingestive or negative expectorative mouth acts, respectively, would they induce good and bad feelings in a person articulating them?
This was tested recently by Topolinski et al. (2014) who construed such inward and outward words and asked participants to rate them for likeability. Note that this manipulation of inward vs. outward wanderings controls for any other features of the letters involved, the inward word MENIKA and its outward counterpart KENIMA consist of the same letters, only in reversed order. Also, note that this manipulation only pertained to consonants and not vowels, because consonants have those very specified muscle action spots, while vowels involve larger open mouth movements whose locations cannot be precisely assigned to front or back (IPA, 1999).
In several experiments using different stimulus pools, Topolinski and colleagues (2014) presented such inward and outward words to participants and asked them to rate them on likeability. It turned out that participants did indeed prefer inward over outward words. Importantly, these effects occurred already when the participants only silently read the words, no overt verbal utterance was necessary to evoke the effect. This is because already silent reading triggers subvocal articulation simulations (Topolinski, 2012; Topolinski & Strack, 2009, 2010). Relatedly, also the sound symbolism effects described earlier already occur under silent reading (e.g., Hinton et al., 2006; Klink, 2000; Kovic et al., 2010; Lowrey & Shrum, 2007).
Showing a more direct behavioral consequence, Topolinski et al. (2014; Experiment 7) told participants that they would enter an online chatroom and could choose a partner to chat with from two possible chatting partner’s usernames. Unbeknownst to them, they always received an inward and an outward word as username. It turned out that participants chose inward names more often than outward names in this set-up.
This basic in-out effect has been replicated by independent research groups in English (Kronrod, Lowrey, & Ackerman, 2015) and Portuguese language (Godinho & Garrido, 2015). Moreover, yet another study realized even more complex movements. Specifically, Topolinski and Bakhtiari (2016) created sequential inward-outward movements within one stimulus word (e.g., in-out, FOLOKOLOF vs. out-in, KOLOFOLOK) and found that the ultimate movement of the word determines its likeability: Participants preferred words that wandered first outward and then inward over words that wandered first inward and then outward.
Moreover, Topolinski and Boecker (2016a) explored how little is necessary to evoke the in-out effect. They found that even only one jump within a word, using only two consonants, such as in EBUK versus EKUB, and even leaving out the vowel, such as in the letter pairs BK versus KB, does the trick (Experiments 1–4). Even only listening to a speaker uttering these words or letter pairs produced similar likeability gains for inward over outward stimuli (Experiment 2).
An alternative explanation for the in-out phenomenon might be the ease or fluency with which inward and outward words are being encoded. Generally, higher fluency elicits positive attitudes (e.g., Lee & Labroo, 2004; see articulation fluency, Alter & Oppenheimer, 2006; Topolinski, Erle, & Bakhtiari, 2016; for similar visual and motor fluency effects, see Topolinski, 2010, 2013, 2014; Topolinski, Erle, & Reber, 2015; Topolinski, Likowski, Weyers, & Strack, 2009; Topolinski & Reber, 2010a, 2010b). However, in a research line exploring this possibility it has been found that processing fluency does not mediate the impact of articulation direction on liking (Bakhtiari, Körner, & Topolinski, 2016).
In sum, the articulation direction of words seems to be a robust determinant of the attractiveness of those words. The next section describes marketing and managerial consequences of this phenomenon.
Marketing Effects of Inward and Outward Articulation
Such laboratory findings on artificial words in dry experimental contexts provide interesting initial basic research evidence on the in-out effect. But does it also work in more applied contexts? Of course, the most obvious implication for applied issues is the use of inward and outward words for brand and product names, similar to work on sound symbolism (e.g., Lowrey & Shrum, 2007). In the following, several different lines of research exploring this are being reviewed.
Food palatability. In one line of research exploring the managerial implications of brand name articulation directions, Topolinski and Boecker (2016b, Experiment 2) presented participants with images of food items and asked how palatable participants felt the food to be. The items, for instance different pieces of cheese or different bottles of wines, bore either inward or outward names. As a result, participants rated food items bearing inward compared to outward names as being more palatable. This finding generalizes the in-out effect to consumers’ assessments of foods, and informs food industry and also restaurant chefs on how to find an attractive name for their products. But the managerial consequences do not stop at edible products.
Product liking and willingness-to-pay. Another line of studies assessed the impact of articulation direction on consumer attitudes. In Topolinski, Zürn, and Schneider (2015) participants received inward and outward words and were told that these would be candidates for future brand names. When asked how much they liked each brand, participants reported higher liking for inward over outward words (Experiment 1). When asked how likely they would purchase a product with that brand name, they also reported higher purchase intentions for inward over outward brands (Experiment 2). Finally, when asked how much they would pay for a certain product, they accordingly reported higher willingness-to-pay for inward over outward brands (Experiments 3–4). This price gain due to articulation direction amounted to up to 13% of the average price participants reported to being willing to pay for a product. Also, this effect occurred for different kinds of products, may they be edible (e.g., chocolate bars) or not (e.g., antivirus software).
In these studies, however, participants received only the product name and no additional competitive information on the product. This stands in contrast to real-life situations, for instance being confronted with a shelf of many different wine brands, where also additional product information can be used to assess a product’s value. Therefore, Topolinski, Zürn, and Schneider (2015) replicated the set-up using a chocolate bar as product adding a second factor orthogonally to articulation direction, namely the information whether the chocolate bar came from fair-trade production or not. As a result, participants reported higher willingness-to-pay for chocolate bars originating from fair-trade compared to non-fair-trade productions. Moreover, and more importantly, independently from whether the chocolate bar ostensibly originated from fair-trade or not, participants also reported higher willingness-to-pay for chocolate bars bearing inward than outward names. This shows that the in-out effect also persists in the presence of a much stronger price determinant and might therefore be an effective yet costless marketing strategy.
Trust in digital interactions. The ever-booming sector of ecommerce is a vast new field of consumer behavior worth exploring. The impersonal and anonymous character of such online environments renders trust being the crucial determinant of consumer choices (Beldad, De Jong, & Steehouder, 2010; Grabner-Kräuter & Kaluscha, 2003; Ridings, Gefen, & Arinze, 2002). To determine trustworthiness, however, users often have only a few cues available, namely most of the times only the names of the sellers and their respective ratings in the reputation systems (Metzger, Flanagin, & Medders, 2010). However, these reputation systems themselves are often perceived as being of questionable trustworthiness (Resnick, Zeckhauser, Swanson, & Lockwood, 2006), leaving often no other information than the name of a seller. The possible influence of articulation direction in such seller names for perceived trustworthiness was the target of studies by Silva and Topolinski (2016a), who used eBay as an example of digital consumer behavior (cf., Cabral & Hortacsu, 2010). They presented participants with screenshots of ostensible eBay seller profiles, containing seller names that featured either inward or outward articulation, and asked for spontaneous impressions of trustworthiness of the presented sellers. The result was that sellers with inward usernames were trusted more than sellers with outward usernames. This shows that articulation direction can also affect digital interactions.
Matching with product features. As we know from the literature on sound symbolism briefly reviewed in the beginning of this chapter, certain word features not always need to exert a main effect of their quality (e.g., high-pitch sounds are always better), but do meaningfully interact with features of the product denoted by those words. For instance, in Lowrey and Shrum (2007) participants preferred high and sharp word sounds over low and grave word sounds only when those names denoted products that should also be small or sharp (e.g., a knife), but showed reversed preferences for products that should be large and grave (e.g., a hammer).
It is thus possible that also articulation direction shows such interactions with features of the product (Topolinski, Boecker, Erle, Bakhtiari, & Pecher, 2015). While generally expectorative mouth acts are negatively associated, such as coughing or spitting, there are indeed products for which expectoration is part of its use, such as mouth rinse or chewing or tobacco. It might be possible that the general preference for inward over outward words disappears for products whose use includes such expectorative acts. To test this, Topolinski, Boecker et al. (2015, Experiment 6) gave participants a bubble gum and told them they would participate in a product test assessing the feature of this bubble gum and possible brand names for it. One half of the participants received the information that this gum was a chewing gum and that they should chew it and explore its taste for two minutes. We predicted that this taste test would induce ingestive mouth movements, chewing, but also sucking on the gum and swallowing the resulting liquid. The other half of the participants received the information that this gum was a bubble gum and that they should try to make bubbles with it for two minutes. We hypothesized that this exercise would result in more expectorative mouth movements, since making bubbles requires to press the gum against the lips and puff air into it, involving mouth movements similar to spitting.
After this exercise, participants were asked to spit out the chewing gum and were asked to rate possible brand names for it, which were again inward and outward words. It turned out that for chewing gums, participants did indeed again prefer inward over outward names, but for bubble gums this in-out effect disappeared. Apparently, this happened due to matching effects between the products’ oral affordances and the articulation patterns: for the bubble gum requiring puffing expectorative mouth movements, inward words did not match as well as in the case of ingestion-associated chewing gum. Although this matching effect was not powerful enough to reverse the in-out effect, it did attenuate it.
In an even stronger manipulation of product features Topolinski, Boecker et al. (2015; Experiments 1–2) compared the impact of in-out branding between a positive, edible product, namely lemonade, and a negative, even harmful substance, namely a toxic chemical. It is obvious that the spontaneous mouth response to lemonade would be swallowing, while a toxic chemical would be spat out of course. In this more extreme comparison, participants preferred inward words over outward words as brand names for lemonade, but outward words over inward words as brand names for toxic chemicals, reversing the basic in-out effect. This line of research shows that also motorically relevant product features have to be taken into account when creating a brand name, particularly the mouth movements that are happening during the product’s usage.
Conclusion on the In-Out Effect
As we can see from these various lines of research, articulation dynamics are an efficient and costless tool for marketing: Inward compared to outward articulation of a person’s, company’s, or product’s name makes the person or company more likeable; it makes dishes seem more palatable, and it makes people being willing to pay more for products, and makes them want to chat with a bearer of an inward name. These demonstrations show that articulation dynamics should be carefully taken into account as a yet unknown determinant of attractiveness of brands, products, and persons.
Conclusion: Using Psychological Principles to Design the Perfect Brand Name
As we can see from these different lines of research, superficial features of names, such as their complexity, their sound symbolism, and the mouth movements their articulation requires, shape consumers’ attitudes (e.g., Topolinski, Maschmann et al., 2014), their associations with the denoted product (e.g., Slepian & Galinsky, 2016), and even their mental representation (e.g., Maglio et al., 2014) – they can even make you happy (Rummer et al., 2014). They exert their influence already during silent reading, and, as far as this was tested experimentally, people cannot consciously correct for them (Silva & Topolinski, 2016a). Thus, these phenomena are a subtle yet effective cue to consumers’ initial gut feelings.
The effects reviewed in this chapter suggest that such subtle features should be carefully taken into account when choosing a name: Make it short and easy, use inward articulation and /i:/ sounds, and carefully consider sound and motor matching with features of the denoted product or company. If you want to imply maleness, use voiced starting phonemes, and choose unvoiced phonemes if you want to imply femaleness. If you want to insinuate or prime preciseness, use front vowels; and if you want consumers to lie back and perceive things from a distance, use back vowels.
Future research will surely identify more of such covert influences of superficial name features. For instance, it is possible that the shape of the letters of a word (round as O or B vs. edged as K or Z), or their visual symmetry (full symmetry as in O, vertical symmetry as in A, or horizontal symmetry as in B) might influence name perception. Furthermore, the sheer position of a letter in the alphabet might work, with early letters being more positive than later letters, or the accordance of the sequence of letters in a name with the sequence these letters have in the alphabet. Let’s wait for future surely intriguing developments, which will give brand and product name designers more and more effective tools to find the perfect name.
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