Research on logo design and evaluation of youth education brands based on visual representation
| Pages | 722-733 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-08-2016-1287 |
| Published date | 20 November 2017 |
| Date | 20 November 2017 |
| Author | Zhijuan Zhu,Huai Cao,Bin Li |
| Subject Matter | Marketing,Product management,Brand management/equity |
Research on logo design and evaluation
of youth education brands based on
visual representation
Zhijuan Zhu, Huai Cao and Bin Li
School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to explore how logo design characteristics influence consumer response based on visual representation.
Logos in different areas may have different characteristics that impact liking a logo. The logos of youth education brands were explored in this study.
Design/methodology/approach –The Kansei engineering (KE) method was employed in this research. In total, 115 logos of youth education
brands were collected and classified into three categories: abstract, natural and text mark. Then 12 of these logos were selected as representative
samples. A set of 171 Kansei pairwise image words was collected, and 14 of them were chosen for further investigation. The psychological
projection experiment was conducted based on a five-point Likert-scale questionnaire with 120 participants. Three st atistical methods including
cluster analysis, factor analysis and correlation analysis were combined for the data analysis.
Findings –The results show that four factors affect liking a logo including a sense of contemporaneity, a sense of esthetics, a feeling of interest and
a sense of style. Accordingly, the weights of these four factors are proposed. The positive correlati on between logo characteristics and liking a logo
was also verified. In addition, the classification results of this study confirm the wide use of natural and English text mark logos in youth education
brands.
Originality/value –The results could guide designers and managers in selecting or modifying logo design for achieving a positive effective
response. This is the first research on logo design characteristics linked with industry domains. This study also contributes to the KE approach to
investigate the relative impact of logo characteristics on liking a logo.
Keywords Evaluation, Logo design, Visual representation, Kansei engineering, Youth education brands
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Since 1950, many corporations have used corporate identity
(CI) as a powerful business strategy tool (Balmer and Gray,
1999). In today’s increasingly competitive marketplace, visual
identity (VI) is considered to be a useful tool that can be
successfully applied to manage the reputation of any
organization (De Mozota, 2003;Bosch et al.,2005;Foroudi
et al., 2014). Logo is the most fundamental part of the VI
(Keller, 2003), which is the symbol of a corporate image. The
role of symbolism is now assigned a greater role and has grown
from its original purpose of increasing organizational visibility
to a position in which it is seen as having a role in
communicatingcorporate strategy (Riel and Balmer, 1997).
The main value attachedto logos has traditionally focused on
the identification and the differentiation of the brand from its
competitors (MacInnis et al.,1999;Machado et al.,2015).
However, in recent years, research on logos has highlighted
other derived consumer outputs, especially consumer affective
reactions. Lutz and Lutz (1977) and Park et al. (2013)
presented logos as triggers of affective reactions prior to the
cognitive process. They note that “logos can be more than
simple tools for identification and differentiation”to ensure
consumer commitment and improve firm performance (Park
et al., 2013). In economics, Ramello and Silva (2006) indicate
the relevance of studying the evolution of trademarks as a
symbol with emotional meaning. Experimental psychologist
Treichler has conducteda famous experiment on human access
to sources of information, finding that 83 per cent of the
information that humans derive from the outside world is
obtained through visual means (Zhu, 2003). In other words,
vision is the most important sense and the main channel
through which humansaccept external information. Studies on
logo design and evaluation based on consumers’visual
representation could benefit understanding consumer affective
reactions to logos.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on
Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/1061-0421.htm
Journal of Product & Brand Management
26/7 (2017) 722–733
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421]
[DOI 10.1108/JPBM-08-2016-1287]
The authors thank all the reviewers for the comments to their manuscript.
This work is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the
Central Universities, HUST (No. 2015QN052), the Teaching Research
Project of HUST (No. 2016001) and also CES-Kingfar Excellent Young
Scholar Joint Research Funding (CES-KF-2016-05). They thank Lishi Li
for the work of preparing survey and all the participants for carrying out the
survey.
Received 9 August 2016
Revised 26 December 2016
2 March 2017
18 March 2017
30 March 2017
Accepted 10 April 2017
722
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