University of Cincinnati

U UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date: I, , hereby submit this original work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in It is entitled: Student Signature: This work and its defense approved by: Committee Chair: Approval of the electronic document: I have reviewed the Thesis/Dissertation in its final electronic format and certify that it is an accurate copy of the document reviewed and approved by the committee. Committee Chair signature: Hearing, Remembering, and Branding: Guidelines for Creating Sonic Logos A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in the Department of Marketing of the College of Business Administration by Vijaykumar Krishnan Palghat PGDM, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta B. Tech., Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi Committee Dr. James J. Kellaris (Chair) Dr. Frank R. Kardes Dr. Wei Pan Abstract Sonic Branding is the strategic use of sound to create an authentic auditory identity for the brand. Conventional applications of sound in branding are tactical and lean on classical conditioning theory by repetitive pairing of sound and brand to create desired associations. In contrast, sonic branding leans on processing fluency theory leveraging sound as information in and of itself. Often such auditory information is nonverbal and nonlinguistic. Sonic logos are good examples illustrating this phenomenon. A sonic logo, “sogo,” the auditory analog of a visual logo, is a typical sonic branding device. Sogos are short melodies not lasting more than six seconds. Some interesting examples are the 5-tone Intel sogo, windows vista’s 4-tone start-up chime and NBC’s 3-tone sogo. Sogos vary in their design characteristics. They may comprise different number of tones. They may have an ascending pattern (Windows Vista), descending pattern (windows XP) or a zigzagging contour (Intel). A sogo may be easier to remember because it comprises ‘chunks’ (Miller 1956) of similar tones. Thus, number of tones they comprise, their contour and their chunkability may characterize Sogos. Per logo literature (Henderson and Cote 1998), good sogos should engender favorable consumer responses on recognition, affect, and familiarity dimensions. For instance, sogos with fewer tones should be easier to remember; thus obtain high true recognition on a subsequent encounter. On the other hand, because they are easier to process, they may engender illusions of familiarity (Whittlesea 1993) leading to high false recognition. Sogos with a zigzagging contour may be more difficult to recall but may be perceived novel and so liked more. In other words, consumers experience differing levels of ease in processing sogos based on the design characteristics. iii This subjective experience of ease of processing (Reber, Wurtz and Zimmerman 2004; Whittlesea 1993; Janiszewski and Meyvis 2001; Winkielman et al 2003) incoming auditory information is misattributed to the judgment at hand: Familiarity (Whittlesea 1993), Positive affect (Reber, Winkielman and Schwarz 1998; Winkielman and Cacioppo 2001), judgments of truth (Reber and Schwarz 1999) and brand Evaluation (Lee and Labroo 2004). This research explores the systematic influence of three design characteristics of sogos : number of tones, contour, and chunkability across five studies on response dimensions. Overall, these studies evidence processing fluency mediation of these influences. Results show that several response dimensions vary systematically with the sogo design characteristics, thus providing for guidelines. Leader brands would want a high true recognition and a low false recognition; brands in a low involvement product segment (e.g., bread) could profit from high false recognition and illusions of familiarity. Huge investments are made to create and air auditory branding stimuli; rights for use of popular songs in commercial jingles may top $500,000 such as for “stand by me,” deployed by Citibank, (Krasilovsky and Shemel 2007). In conclusion, given that sogos are branding devices, guidelines from this research should reduce the precarious dependence of marketers on musicians (Bruner 1990), and provide for greater precision over sonic branding. iv © Copyright 2009 Vijaykumar Krishnan Palghat ALL RIGHTS RESERVED v Acknowledgements First, I thank Prasanna, my wife, for her continued love, patience, encouragement and support for twenty five years now without which any and all of my achievements, including this dissertation would be impossible and quite meaningless. I thank my two daughters Aditi, and Anaga for their beautiful presence in our lives that makes this exercise at all worthwhile. Next, I thank my parents Smt. Akhila Krishnan and Shri P.N. Krishnan at whose feet I learnt music to the extent I could. I also thank violin vidwan Shri M.S. Sundaresan at whose feet I learnt to play the violin to the extent I could. I thank all my teachers and professors at DTEA Sr. Secondary School, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta and University of Cincinnati, for imparting knowledge and wisdom to me with sincerity and grace. I thank Dr. James Kellaris, my committee chair for his excellent guidance throughout this program. I also thank Dr. Frank Kardes and Dr. Wei Pan, my committee members for their valuable suggestions and guidance in this dissertation research. I thank Dr. Bruce Pfeiffer, University of New Hampshire, for his wonderful voiceovers in the stimuli used in study 1. I thank Doina Chichernea, University of Cincinnati, for her valuable help with development of the bootstrap SAS routine. Finally, as Saint Thyagaraja observes in his immortal composition in Raga Sri “EndarO mahAnubhavulu antarIki vandanamulu” … To the innumerable great souls [known or unknown, of past present or future], …[my] salutations. vi Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Literature Review 9 1. Consumer Responses to Musical Stimuli 9 2. Processing Fluency 14 Chapter 3 Defining Sonic Branding 19 Chapter 4 Theory and Hypotheses 24 Chapter 5 Research Studies 39 1. Study 1 41 2. Study 2 45 3. Study 3 50 4. Study 4 58 5. Study 5 64 General Discussion 69 Beyond this Dissertation 74 Some Final Thoughts 79 References 82 Appendices 96 Appendix A 96 vii Chapter 1 Introduction Sound, in its many forms, plays a central role in branding. Distinctive audio logos such as the Windows chimes or Nokia ring tones are well known throughout the world. Older readers will recall the three-note NBC television network chimes and the ascending scale accompanying the spelling of J-E-L-L-O. Jingles such as “I'm Chiquita banana and I've come to say,” “Pepsi cola hits the spot,” and Coca-cola’s “I’d like to teach the world to sing” achieved the status of cultural icons. Wallace (1991) cited the Oscar Meyer song, noting that “Just saying the brand name is usually enough to start… the jingle playing through your mind” (p. 239). Yet, despite its undeniably central role, sonic branding is yet to be unambiguously defined and consequently there is a paucity of systematic research on sonic branding. This leads to what Bruner (1990) terms a ‘precarious dependence’ of marketers on musicians for sonic designs. Although the identity of brands is often expressed both visually and sonically, branding research has been almost exclusively conducted in the visual domain. For example, expounding on the marketing strategy of planned visual communications, Sthal (1964) emphasizes visual synergy across brand advertisements, packaging, label tags, catalogs and brochures for visual brand identity. Krugman’s (1965) research on influence of TV advertisements on consumer visual behavior and consequent learning under low involvement is another early example focusing on visual domain. This inadvertent preference for visual stimuli surfaces in several laboratory experiments. Lichtenstein and Srull (1985) conducted experiments to disentangle on-line versus memory- based judgments. Respondents were presented an informationally heavy product print ad. They were either required to form an evaluation of the product or an evaluation of the advertisement in 1 terms of grammar and style. Subsequently, all respondents were asked for their product evaluation at session 2. Results showed greater correlation among judgments in the product evaluation condition because these respondents simply retrieved previously formed judgments while those in the advertisement evaluation condition had to retrieve individual attributes at session 2 from memory and then form judgments. Perhaps this experiment could have been operationalized by exposing respondents to a radio spot; i.e., stimulus mode need not interact with this pattern of results. On the other hand, it is an empirical question if this distinction between on-line versus memory-based judgments holds across different stimulus modalities. In a study investigating attitude formation toward unattended stimuli, Janiszewski (1988) manipulated the placement of the picture and demonstrated that brands are more positively evaluated when picture is on the left of the brand name and therefore in focus with respect to the compatible right hemisphere. Janiszewski (1988) notes the examples of right hemisphere compatible tasks to include processing of both of music and visuospatial information. That is, left hemisphere is good at recognizing individual pieces of information while the right hemisphere is good at integrating holistic information auditory

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