Cued-recall asymmetries: the case of brand names and logos

While much research has examined the influence of well-known brands on preferences, the current studies focus on the equally important but less-examined topic of brand-knowledge formation as brands are first encountered. Zeroing in on the process of learning and associating a brand’s name and logo, the authors posit and demonstrate that consumers are more likely to accurately recall a newly-encountered brand’s logo when cued by its name than the converse (recalling the name when cued with the logo). Importantly, this cued-recall asymmetry is shown to not be a mere artifact of logos being more easily recalled. The asymmetry holds when the target logos and names are equally independently memorable, and logos are not more accurately recalled than names when both are cued by other associations (e.g., color). The concept-based theory of word meaning helps explain these results.