Auditory and Visual Brand Identifiers in Chinese and English

A main component of branding is to link a brand name to nonverbal cues that facilitate brand name memory. The authors examine the integration in memory of auditory and visual brand identifiers with brand names written in the logographic Chinese script compared with the alphabetic English script. The first experiment compares native Mandarin speakers living in China with native English speakers living in the United States. The second experiment examines bilingual Cantonese-English speakers living in Hong Kong. The results of the experiments suggest that visual brand identifiers are integrated in memory more easily with Chinese brand names, whereas auditory brand identifiers are integrated in memory more easily with English brand names. These results are of theoretical interest because they demonstrate that writing systems affect cognitive processes that are involved in the integration of words with nonverbal information. The results are of practical interest because they suggest that the relative success of auditory and visual brand identity strategies is affected by differences in writing systems.