Abstract:

Brand names serve as crucial touchpoints for establishing brand-consumer relationships and are integral components of brand assets. Linguistic studies on branding have established that the phonetic features of brand names can influence consumers’ cognition, emotions, and behavior. However, research on the impact and mechanisms of phonetic features on consumers’ ethical responses is limited. Based on the mind perception theory, this study explores the asymmetric paths through which the use of repeated two-syllable brand names influences consumers’ moral reactions in two different situations. Based on seven experiments, we determined that in the context of brands as moral agents, compared to non-repeated two-syllable brand names, repeated ones can alleviate consumers’ negative moral reactions (anger, disgust, blame, punishment intention) toward the brand by reducing the think dimension of brand mind perception (rather than the feel dimension). However, in the context of brands as moral patients, repeated two-syllable brand names enhance consumers’ positive moral reactions (sympathy, compassion, regret, and purchase intention) toward the brand by increasing the feel dimension of brand mind perception (rather than the think dimension).

Experiment 1a was designed to derive experimental evidence on the relationship between repeated two-syllable brand name and consumers’ negative moral reactions in the context of moral agent. Experiment 1a (N = 200, 130 female, M_age = 29.85, SD_age = 8.86) was a single factor (repeated two-syllable: yes vs. no) between-subjects design in which participants were randomly assigned to different groups to read a news report regarding an incident of vulgar advertising with repeated or non-repeated two-syllable brand names. Participants then reported their level of anger, disgust, and blame toward the brand. Experiment 1b (N = 200, 127 female, M_age = 30.26, SD_age = 9.00), which had a similar between-subjects design as Experiment 1a, verified the relationship between repeated two-syllable brand name and consumers’ positive moral reactions in the context of moral patient. The participants were randomly assigned to two groups to read a news report regarding an incident of corporate data breach. They then reported their level of sympathy, compassion, and pity for the brand. Experiment 2a (N = 196, 124 female, M_age = 34.04, SD_age = 11.49) was designed to confirm the mediating role of the think dimension of the brand in the relationship between repeated two-syllable brand name and consumers’ negative moral reactions in the context of moral agent. The experimental design was the same as that of Experiment 1a. Participants were randomly assigned to two groups to read a news report regarding an incident of drug companies raising drug prices despite patients. Participants then reported their level of anger, blame, feel dimension, think dimension, brand warmth, and brand competence toward the brand. Experiment 2b (N = 196, 119 female, M_age = 29.86, SD_age = 7.50) verified the mediating role in the relationship between repeated two-syllable brand name and consumers’ positive moral reactions in the context of moral patient. The experimental design and procedure were identical to that in Experiment 1b. After reading a news report regarding the incident of corporate data breach, participants reported their level of sympathy, support, feel dimension, think dimension, brand warmth, and brand competence toward the brand. Experiment 3a sought to confirm the influence of repeated two-syllable brand name on downstream behavioral intention in the context of moral agent. Experiment 3a (N = 296, 190 female, M_age = 29.65, SD_age = 8.49) was a single factor (repeated two-syllable: yes vs. no vs. “little”) between-subjects design; participants were randomly assigned to three groups to read the same news report as in Experiment 2a. They then reported their level of anger, disgust, blame, feel dimension, think dimension, and punishment intention toward the brand. Experiment 3b (N = 292, 184 female, M_age = 31.48, SD_age = 10.23) verified the influence of repeated two-syllable brand name on downstream behavioral intention in the context of moral patient and was a similar between-subjects design to Experiment 3a. The participants were randomly assigned to three groups and asked to read a news report on an incident of one company being coerced by another. They then reported their level of sympathy, compassion, regret, feeling, thinking, and purchase intention for the brand. Experiment 4 (N = 363, 233 female, M_age = 31.90, SD_age = 10.94) used a 2 (repeated two-syllable: yes vs. no) × 2 (moral agent vs. moral patient) between-subjects design to more rigorously demonstrate the effect of repeated two-syllable names in the same moral situation. Participants were randomly assigned to four groups and asked to read a news report on an incident of commercial bullying. In the moral agent group, the brand was a game production company that bullies other firms, and in the moral patient group, the brand was a game operation company that is bullied by other firms. The participants reported their level of unethical judgment on the incident and the level of feel and think dimensions toward the brand.

A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) in Experiments 1a and 1b suggested that repeated two-syllable brand name could decrease consumers’ negative moral reactions toward the brand when it was a moral agent, whereas such brand name could increase consumers’ positive moral reactions when the brand was a moral patient (see Table 1).

The ANOVA results of Experiment 2a and an examination of parallel mediation revealed that the think dimension of brand mind perception mediated the influence of repeated two-syllable brand name on consumers’ negative moral reactions (see Table 2 and Figure 1).

Based on the ANOVA and parallel medication analysis, the results of Experiment 2b revealed that feel dimension of brand mind perception mediated the influence of repeated two-syllable brand name on consumers’ positive moral reactions (see Table 3). At the same time, Experiment 2a ruled out alternative explanations for the stereotype content model. On the other hand, Experiment 2b established that after controlling for the indirect effect of the stereotype content model, a significant mediating effect of the mind perception theory remained (see Figure 2).

Meanwhile, the results of the serial mediation mechanism analysis in Experiments 3a and 3b revealed that in the moral agent context, repeated two-syllable brand names ultimately influence consumers’ intentions to punish by influencing the think dimension and negative moral reactions (see Figure 3 and 4). However, in the moral patient context, repeated two-syllable brand names ultimately influence consumers’ purchase intention by influencing the feel dimension and positive moral reactions. In addition, the ANOVA and multi-category mediation mechanism analyses of Experiments 3a and 3b documented that repeated two-syllable brand name and “little” could produce similar effects in the moral agent and moral patient context (see Table 4 and 5).

Finally, the results of the two-way ANOVA for Experiment 4 indicated significant interactions between repeated two-syllable names and moral roles in the immoral judgment of the incident and the feel and think dimensions of the brand. In the moral agent condition, participants in the repeated two-syllable group made fewer unethical judgments about the incident and perceived a lower level of the think dimension of the brand than participants in the non-repeated two-syllable group, but no significant difference was observed in the perceived level of feel dimension. In the moral patient condition, participants in the repeated two-syllable group made more unethical judgments about the incident and perceived a higher level of the feel dimension of the brand than those in the non-repeated two-syllable group, but no significant difference was observed in the perceived level of the think dimension (see Table 6 and Figure 5).

This study provides an innovative theoretical exploration of the causal relationship between sound symbolism and consumers’ reactions to business ethical crisis. Meanwhile, we reveal the mechanism by which the two dimensions (think and feel) of brand mind perception exist as asymmetric mediators. In addition, we employ the theory of mind perception to discover how people anthropomorphize non-human things, which deepens the exploration of the mechanisms of anthropomorphism-generating processes in the brand anthropomorphism literature. In a practical sense, our research not only provides reference for the design of brand names and nicknames but also directly assists in crafting public relations content for handling ethical crises and creating content for public service announcements.

Key words: repeated two-syllable, mind perception theory, moral reaction, moral agent, moral patient