A Study on the Effect of Brand Mark’s Formative Characteristic and Communication Capability on Brand Awareness

Abstract

There are various development potentials in a developing country like China. Since the concept of brand design came from the western countries, China has begin to explore the road of brand design education. For the situation of brand design education in China, it is still in a stage of development. In fact, many people don’t have the correct understanding on Brand Design. In the love of brand design, I especially want to write the thesis about the development of brand mark in China. The design of brand mark should take in to account the targeted groups, the communication capabilities of brand message, the formative characteristics, and consumers’ psychological factors. In this thesis, I focused on studying the brand mark of Chinese online shopping malls and on studying the influence of brand mark’s expression type, formative characteristics and communication capability on brand awareness. The subjects of this study are Taobao, JD, VIP.com, TMALL, SUNING and YHD. The selection of the six subjects are based on data from the report of ‘2016 Ranking of Online Shopping Mall(app) in China’ which was provided by Cheetah Global Lab. In order to make the analysis part more theoretical, the literature review is conducted. By analyzing the literature, this thesis states the general definitions of brand identity, brand awareness, brand image, and the importance of brand mark. The expression types and design characteristics are also study in this thesis. From this survey, the word “Mark” comes from the old English “Mearc” which means “sign, symbol, visual impression”. While modern “Mark” represents “sign and leave a trace”. I learned Brand Mark through the literature of Brand Design, which wrote by Albert Young Choi. Brand Mark is an important mean of connecting consumers and brand products, and through the brand mark consumers can understand the message and meaning the brand wants to convey. Brand mark is based on the visual elements (form, color and typeface) of the brand elements, which form the overall impression of the enterprise or the products embodied by the brand, and have an important influence on consumers’ emotional response. In the process of studying about the brand awareness, I learn that brand awareness and brand image are two components of brand knowledge. And brand awareness is an essential element for the process of forming brand image. Consumer’s awareness of a brand comes from many aspects – brand campaign marketing, brand products or services, brand names, brand logo and so on. As the core of visual communication, brand mark has a significant impact on the brand awareness. For the visual aspect, the analytical method I apply is to analyze the form, the color, and the typeface. By using the Color Image Scale, the Basic Form Taste Scale and the Lettering Taste Scale, the brand marks for six Chinese online shopping malls are visually contrasted with those of Amazon, South Korea's Gmarket, and Japan's Rakuten. In chapter four, I will carry on the questionnaire investigation on the brand marks of six subjects in China. The results of the analysis show that the average value of the Signiture Mark is slightly higher than the mean value of the Word Mark from the consumers' understanding of the brand meaning. The average value of the Signiture Mark is slightly higher than the average value of the Word Mark in terms of consumers’ memory of brand mark’s formative characteristics. The results also show that if a brand mark’s visual elements make it easy for consumers to remember, consumers’ association with brand products or services will be stronger. Meanwhile, consumers’ reliability for brand products or services is relatively high. By Pearson Correlation Analysis, the results indicate that the higher the degree of consumer acceptance of brand message, the awareness of the brand meaning will be relatively high. The brand mark’s expression type, formative characteristics and communication capabilities have a great impact on brand awareness. Firstly, according to the analysis, we learned that the expression type used by a brand mark has a certain effect on consumer’s awareness of the brand meaning. The survey results show that consumers are more aware of the Signature Mark than the Logotype. Secondly, consumers will identify and distinguish brand marks through visual elements (shape, color and typeface). When a brand mark’s visual elements make it easy for consumers to remember, consumers’ association with brand products or services will be stronger. Meanwhile, consumers’ reliability for brand products or services is relatively high. Thirdly, Brand mark is the core element of the brand's visual communication. The core of visual communication mainly makes effect by conveying the message the brand wants to convey to consumers. if a brand mark has a strong communication capability on brand message, consumers’ awareness of brand meaning is relatively strong. The conclusion of this thesis emphasizes the importance of expression type, communication capabilities and formative characteristic which need to be considered for brand mark design. When a brand mark used to allow consumers to identify the form, the brand meaning can be specifically expressed, and consumers’ association of the brand can be promoted as well. If the three aspects of the brand mark can be well coordinated, brand awareness and the brand loyalty can be greatly enhanced. Also, the marketing can be promoted. Therefore, in the design of brand mark, there is no doubt that these three factors must be considered.