Anna Torres

Assessing brand image through communalities and asymmetries in brand-to-attribute and attribute-to-brand associations

Brand image is a key component of customer-based brand equity, and refers to the associations a consumer holds in memory. Such associations are often directional; one should distinguish between brand-to-attribute and attribute-to-brand associations. Information on these associations arise from two ways of collecting data respectively: brand-by-brand evaluations of all attributes and attribute-by-attribute evaluations of all brands. In this paper, the authors present a methodological approach, namely correspondence analysis of matched matrices, to assess the communalitites as well as asymmetries between brand-to-attribute and attribute-to-brand associations. The methodology results in perceptual maps visualizing brand image. The approach is illustrated in an empirical market research project in which two samples of consumers evaluated ten brands of deodorants and eleven attributes.

Dual scaling and correspondence analysis of preferences, paired comparisons and ratings

Abstract The methods of dual scaling (DS) and correspondence analysis (CA) are used extensively in marketing research for analyzing categorical data. When applied to preferences, paired comparisons and ratings, dual scaling has been contrasted with correspondence analysis, as if the two techniques operated differently on these data. In this note, we show that correspondence analysis provides exactly the same solution as dual scaling once the data have been transformed by a so-called “doubling” with respect to the respondents.

Brand logo design: examining consumer response to naturalness

Purpose – This paper aims to study how logo design characteristics influence consumer response. Based on an in-depth literature review on consumer responses to logo design, the authors included in this research one fundamental dimension of logo design, namely, naturalness and investigated the influence of the different types of natural logo designs on affective response. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 96 logos were selected as design stimuli. The logos were previously classified, according to the naturalness of the logo design, as having an abstract, cultural or organic design. Responses were gathered through a survey in Portugal, including two studies with 220 participants. Findings – Results show that naturalness is an essential logo design element which significantly influences consumer affective responses to the logo, and that natural logos are clearly preferred to abstract logos. Additionally, this research indicates that, within natural logos, organic designs are favored over cultural desig...

The Effects of Uncertainty Avoidance on Brand Performance: Marketing Creativity, Product Innovation and the Brand Duration

This paper investigates the link between brand performance and cultural primes in high-risk, innovation-based sectors. In theory section, we propose that the level of cultural uncertainty avoidance embedded in a firm determine its marketing creativity by increasing the complexity and the broadness of a brand. It determines also the rate of firm product innovations. Marketing creativity and product innovation influence finally the firm marketing performance. Empirically, we study trademarked promotion in the Software Security Industry (SSI). Our sample consists of 87 firms that are active in SSI from 11 countries in the period 1993-2000. We use the data coming from SSI-related trademarks registered by these firms, ending up with 2,911 SSI-related trademarks and a panel of 18,213 observations. We estimate a two stage model in which first we predict the complexity and the broadness of a trademark as a measure of marketing creativity and the rate of product innovations. Among several control variables, our variable of theoretical interest is the Hofstede’s uncertainty avoidance cultural index. Then, we estimate the trademark duration with a hazard model using the predicted complexity and broadness as well as the rate of product innovations, along with the same control variables. Our evidence confirms that the cultural avoidance affects the duration of the trademarks through the firm marketing creativity and product innovation.

A note on the dual scaling of dominance data and its relationship to correspondence analysis

Dual scaling of a subjects-by-objects table of dominance data (preferences, paired comparisons and successive categories data) has been contrasted with correspondence analysis, as if the two techniques were somehow different. In this note we show that dual scaling of dominance data is equivalent to the correspondence analysis of a table which is doubled with respect to subjects. We also show that the results of both methods can be recovered from a principal components analysis of the undoubled dominance table which is centred with respect to subject means.