Symbolic Effects Of Glabimi Vs. 'Glavifi'

Abstract

This study investigates the sound symbolic effects of brand names (“Glabimi” vs. “Glavifi”) and product package shape (round vs. angular) on consumers’ perceived product trust judgment. The product category used for this experiment was hair loss shampoo. 101 English-Mandarin bilinguals aged 18-27 participated in this study. An experiment with two separate segments was conducted: the first segment explored the possibility of consumers making trust judgments solely from visual exposure to the brand name and package shape of the shampoo. The results showed that only brand names significantly influenced perceived trust judgments of participants; specifically, the sharp-sounding brand name, “Glavifi” was rated as more trustworthy compared
Another widely studied exception is sound symbolism where the acoustic properties within words can be naturally meaningful to the hearer. Sapir (1929) observed that over 80% of the participants matched the non-words mil and mal to small and large table respectively, showing that the [i] sound was more commonly associated with concepts of smallness while the [a] sound was associated more with concepts of largeness. Since then, a wide range of literature from different fields of study has provided evidence demonstrating the existence of a non-arbitrary relationship between sound and meaning, supporting the notion that acoustic property of phonemes within a word has the ability to convey information beyond its intended meaning. These findings range from the effects of sound symbolism on language acquisition and learning (Yoshida, 2012; Imai et al., 2015; Lockwood, Dingemanse, & Hagoort, 2016), object recognition (Aveyard, 2011) and perception of products from brand names (Lowrey & Shrum, 2007; Yorkston & Menon,
Much later, Ramachandran and Hubbard (2001) successfully replicated Köhler’s study and found that when shown figures with rounded and sharp edges, 95% of participants tend to match bouba to the former and kiki to the latter. This sound-shape association has been shown to extend to other phonemes. Non-words containing the consonants /b/, /ʃ/, /d/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /s/, /p/, /ʒ/ and /ɡ/ tend to be associated to shapes with rounder edges compared to /f/, /k/, /t/, /v/ and /z/. Whereas unrounded vowels /i/ and /e/ were more often matched to shapes with sharper edges than rounded vowels /o/ and /u/ (Fort, Martin & Peperkamp,