| Summary: | 博士 === 國立政治大學 === 企業管理學系 === 106 === This thesis aimed to ascertain how consumers would evaluate the similarity and make aesthetic judgement between the original logo and the new logo of a brand in the process of a brand’s reform or a brand extension. Through a qualitative interview and three experiments, the study explored the process of consumers' aesthetic comparison and judgment on the aesthetic similarity between logos using the structural alignment theory and attention-driven perspective.
In the qualitative in-depth interview, a total of nine aesthetics principles that consumers used in the logo comparison process was elicited and then classified into two categories. The first category is concrete aesthetic principles which include: color, lightness, color harmony, structural symmetry, and balance of structure. The second category is interpretational aesthetic principles which entail: meaning, sense of design, simplicity in the design concept, and modernity. A further analysis of the aesthetic principles and their alignable and non-aligable attributes showed that non-alignabilities outnumbered alignabilities in interpretational aesthetic principles when consumers were given the task to make aesthetic choices. On the other hand, more alignabilities than non-alignabilities were identified in concrete aesthetic principles in consumers’ aesthetic judgment. In addition, the number of alignabilities exceeded that of non-alignabilities in both concrete and interpretational aesthetic principles in the similarity task.
Study two was a 2 (concrete aesthetic principle vs. interpretational aesthetic principle) x2 (alignable difference vs. non-alignable difference) factorial experiment designed to test the influence of different design combinations on aesthetic comparison and similarity judgment. The result showed that consumers significantly relied more on alignable difference attributes than on non-alignable difference attributes when asked to evaluate the similarity between the original logo and the new logo, while non-alignable differences had a greater influence on their aesthetics judgment. The study assumed that aesthetic principles would be influenced by the presentation and the evaluation task. Differences between alignable and non-alignable presentations observed in the two tasks under any of the same aesthetic principle were examined. The hypothesis was supported by the result. In the similarity task, differences between alignable and non-alignable presentations under concrete aesthetic principles were bigger than those found under interpretational aesthetics principles. Moreover, in the aesthetic judgment task, differences between alignable and non-alignalbe presentations found under interpretational aesthetics principles were bigger than those under concrete principles.
Study Three and Four extended the result of Study Two in the context of brand extension. The assumption of the two experiments was held that the influence of aesthetic principles and alignablities would be moderated by the distance between the categories of the original product and extension product. Generally, consumers relied on alignable difference attributes to compare the similarity of the two logos and non-alignable difference attributes to make aesthetic judgment. Nonetheless, the moderator effect of the distance of the categories of the original and extension products were not significance.
The study found that non-alignable difference attributes were more important than alignable ones when making aesthetic judgement. Also, alignable difference attributes played a greater role in similarity judgment. The theoretical contribution of this study is to test the alignabilitiy effect on integrated graphic messages. This study clarified the influence of the relationships between alignable and non-alignable attributes and aesthetics principles. The importance of non-alignable difference attributes will be established only when the attribute content requires high cognitive resources like interpretational aesthetic principles.
The commercial applications expected in this study, are to provide new references for logo designs. If a new brand is to incorporate aesthetic elements into its logo design, it is advised to add a unique interpretational aesthetic element. If a company is looking to strengthen the link between its consumers and its existing brands, it may consider employing design elements of its existing brand logo to create an alignable difference.
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