Social psychology applied to advertising: The effect of sound symbolism on perceived characteristics of brands
Social psychology applied to advertising: The effect of sound symbolism on perceived characteristics of brands

Summary/Abstract: Our article reviews the social psychology, marketing and linguistics research, underlying the relation between the phonetic symbolism and the implicit cognitions of the individuals. We presented, chronologically, a series of experiments which manipulated the effects of some consonants and vowels being present or absent, to unfamiliar stimuli (meaningless words, brand names, proper nouns, company names, abbreviations) over the cognitions and attitudes of the perceivers. The results of such studies have shown that the phonetic structure of a name determines automatic cognitions and, as consequence, the unfamiliar stimuli are evaluated according to the perception on sounds. These hypotheses were further replicated in the marketing research, the focus of the studies being the way consumers attribute the positive or negative characteristics to real or fictitious brands. Also, in the line of the hypothesis of phonetic universality, research conducted on cross‑cultural samples indicated as likely that the front‑vowels should be associated to positivity (velocity, beauty, tenderness) while the back‑vowels should connote negative characteristics (bluntness, hugeness, lacking in flavor). Similarly, some stop consonants (p, t, b) have been associated with masculine products and more expensive ones, while the fricatives (s, z) were associated with the feminine attributes, hence, the debate on the role of phonetic symbolism in an efficient targeting of consumer products. We also discussed the value of such research for the academic take on advertising and how could these hypotheses be tested according to other sociodemographic data, such as the consumer’s income, residency, ethnicity, or according to the product type (automobile industry, cosmetics, IT products etc.). In perspective, the particularities of the Romanian language’ phonetics, as well as the knowledge in the social psychology of advertising could generate a series of multidisciplinary experiments, with applicative value in marketing and branding.

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