Current Issue Summary
Dec 2023 (Vol. 64, Issue 4)
Does Childhood Exposure to a Brand Guarantee Brand Name Recognition? Comparing Age-of-Acquisition Effects with Ongoing Brand Exposure and Experience
The age-of-acquisition effect has been studied widely in psychology research. It suggests that things learned early in life are recognized faster and more accurately. This new study by Peilin Phua, Bill Page, Giang Trinh, Nicole Hartnett, and Rachel Kennedy (all at Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, University of South Australia), confirms that effect in the context of brand names in advertising, but “cautions that the managerial impact of age of acquisition is small.” In fact, “brand exposure frequency and usage recency have a far greater effect on recognition than age of acquisition.” The researchers focus on five categories of consumer packaged goods (beer, breakfast cereal, chocolate, hair care and pet food) in Australia. Data was obtained through a survey. To accommodate both younger and older consumers, each category included brands launched across the 20th century, for a total of 52 real brands. There was an equal number of fictitious brands because the task required respondents to determine whether the brands were true or false. Brands were selected across varying market shares and also to ensure enough responses for brand exposure and usage.
Among the takeaways:
- “The strongest age-of-acquisition effect is observed among individuals who are unfamiliar with the brand, suggesting that repetition, such as in advertising, is necessary.
- “Respondents were slower to identify brands released before they turned 15, indicating that memory-based processes occur for early-learned brands, whereas late-learned brands relied more on processes that were not memory based, such as guessing.
- “Older consumers’ usage and exposure status for newer brands are especially influential, indicating that this cohort requires greater repetition and maintenance to sustain recognition fluency.
- “A faster response time does not necessarily indicate better memory structures or the ability to identify branding correctly. Thus, using time-to-respond measures in a branding context may be problematic.”