MRKT 670 Week 3 DB Forum 2 Example

Discussion Board Forum 2: Thread and Two Replies

MRKT 670 Brand Management, Discussion Board Forum 2 (thread and two replies)

Thread by [Student Name]

The prompt, the bakery and the classmates' posts are composites standing in for the course's own forum; the textbook, Scripture and published studies are real; the requirements follow Liberty's public course guide for MRKT 670.

Thread

Gran's Kitchen opened in 1987 as a single bakery in Greenville, South Carolina. It now runs fourteen cafés in three states, sells bread to restaurants and plans to reach thirty locations within five years. The owners worry that the name now works against them: it suggests a home kitchen rather than a café chain, and at least three unrelated businesses in their region use similar names, which a trademark attorney has warned will make expansion harder.

Keller (2013) gives six criteria for brand elements. Three build equity, memorability, meaningfulness and likability, and three defend it, transferability across products and regions, adaptability over time, and protectability in law and against competitors. The current name scores well on likability and meaning but poorly on transferability, since "kitchen" undersells cafés and wholesale bread, and very poorly on protectability.

The owners have three candidates. "Gran's Bakehouse" keeps the family warmth but remains hard to protect. "Hearthloaf" is distinctive and protectable, suggests bread and warmth, and is easy to remember. "Saluda Bread Company," named for a nearby river, is protectable and meaningful locally but may not travel to other states, where customers would have no reason to know the river or connect it with bread.

Research helps judge the sound of each. Lowrey and Shrum (2007), in two experiments with invented names, found that people preferred names whose vowel sounds connoted attributes that were positive for the product, such as smallness and sharpness for a knife, and preferred the same names less when those attributes were negative for the product, while names with negative vowel sounds were least preferred overall. "Hearthloaf," with its open, back vowels, suggests fullness and warmth, which suits bread far better than a name built on thin, front vowels.

The logo matters as much as the name. Rating 195 real logos on thirteen design features, Henderson and Cote (1998) concluded that a logo people should recognize correctly needs to look natural and harmonious with a moderate amount of detail, and that one meant to look professional also needs moderate detail and a natural form. The current logo, a detailed drawing of a grandmother at an oven, is natural but too elaborate to read on a coffee cup. A simplified hearth with a loaf shape would keep the image natural while making it clear at small sizes, on a delivery van, a bread bag and a phone screen alike, which matters for a brand that will be seen far more often in passing than up close.

I would recommend "Hearthloaf," with the line "Baked the way Gran taught us" for the first two years, so the new name borrows the old one's warmth while it builds its own. The line also signals continuity to the loyal customers most likely to resist a change.

Scripture records that God renamed Abram as Abraham, father of a multitude, when the promise to him grew larger than his old name could hold (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Genesis 17:5). A brand rename can carry the same honest logic: a new name for a larger calling, kept faithful to where the business began.

Classmates: would you keep the family reference in the tagline, or make a clean break?

Reply to Jordan

Jordan, your thread proposed "Zivo" as the name for a budgeting app for college students and argued that a short invented name is easy to trademark and remember. I agree on both counts, since invented names score well on protectability and memorability among the criteria Keller (2013) sets out, but research on sound symbolism suggests you should check what "Zivo" sounds like it means.

Klink (2000) showed that consumers infer product attributes from the sounds of invented names, so that names with certain vowels and consonants convey qualities such as lightness, speed or softness, and that sound symbolism can give a new name meaning before any advertising. Yorkston and Menon (2004) found that people judged an ice cream named "Frosh" to be smoother, creamier and richer than the same ice cream named "Frish," purely because of the vowel. For a budgeting app, you might want a name that sounds light and quick, and "Zivo," with a front vowel followed by a back one, sends mixed signals. A small test of three or four candidates with students, asking which name sounds fastest, lightest and most trustworthy with money, would settle it cheaply.

A proverb likens the right word at the right moment to gold fruit set in silver (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Proverbs 25:11). A name is a word the brand will speak millions of times, so it is worth testing whether it fits.

Did you consider names that tell students what the app does, or do you prefer the protection that an invented name gives?

Reply to Camille

Camille, your thread argued that a regional coffee chain should simplify its detailed logo, a steaming cup inside a circle of text, to a single rounded mark, because simpler logos look modern on phone screens. Keller (2013) supports updating logos as brands age, but research suggests that the chain's most loyal customers may not welcome the change.

Walsh et al. (2010) studied 632 consumers' reactions to redesigns of two athletic shoe logos that made angular logos rounder. Strongly committed consumers evaluated the redesigned logos more negatively the greater the change, and those evaluations lowered their attitudes toward the brand, while weakly committed consumers reacted positively. Hagtvedt (2011) found that logos with deliberately incomplete lettering made firms seem more innovative but less trustworthy, which suggests that a chain whose appeal rests on trust should avoid designs that look clever at the expense of clarity.

The answer may be a gradual redesign that keeps the cup and drops the text, introduced first on the app and the website, where change is expected, before it reaches the cups. Jesus said that new wine is put into fresh wineskins, so that both are preserved (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Mark 2:22). A redesign should fit what the brand has become without bursting what its loyal customers value.

Does the chain know how many of its customers are regulars? Their reaction may matter more than a new customer's, and a short survey showing the old and new marks side by side to both groups would show whether the split the research predicts appears in this chain too.

References

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Hagtvedt, H. (2011). The impact of incomplete typeface logos on perceptions of the firm. Journal of Marketing, 75(4), 86-93. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.75.4.86

Henderson, P. W., & Cote, J. A. (1998). Guidelines for selecting or modifying logos. Journal of Marketing, 62(2), 14-30. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224299806200202

Keller, K. L. (2013). Strategic brand management: Building, measuring, and managing brand equity (4th ed.). Pearson.

Klink, R. R. (2000). Creating brand names with meaning: The use of sound symbolism. Marketing Letters, 11(1), 5-20. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008184423824

Lowrey, T. M., & Shrum, L. J. (2007). Phonetic symbolism and brand name preference. Journal of Consumer Research, 34(3), 406-414. https://doi.org/10.1086/518530

Walsh, M. F., Winterich, K. P., & Mittal, V. (2010). Do logo redesigns help or hurt your brand? The role of brand commitment. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 19(2), 76-84. https://doi.org/10.1108/10610421011033421

Yorkston, E., & Menon, G. (2004). A sound idea: Phonetic effects of brand names on consumer judgments. Journal of Consumer Research, 31(1), 43-51. https://doi.org/10.1086/383422