A sensory approach to brand confusion

Abstract

Brand managers invest huge amount of money and efforts to build unique and recognisable brands. Some questionable companies are enticed to reap the benefit of strong brands without building them, producing counterfeits and copycat brands with similarly pronounced brand names, resulting in brand confusion (BC). One way that the original brand manufacturers can try to reduce BC is by advertising their products through the media channel that leads to least confusion. In this paper, we investigate what type of modality advertisements — visual or auditory (print, radio) or both (television) — affect the least or the most the level of BC. Our empirical research shows that television advertisement leads to the lowest level of BC, while radio advertisement leads to the most confusion. We found that the higher the product involvement, the lower the BC for print advertisements. Involvement has neither direct nor moderating effects for television or radio ads. Furthermore, gender has neither direct nor moderating effects on visual or auditory channels.