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1. Introduction
Retail markets provide consumers with a large variety of similar purchase alternatives. Companies attempt to differentiate their products and to communicate key benefits of their brands. One method of doing this is by the use of slogans (Kohli et al., 2007). A slogan is understood as a specific product “label” that consumers can memorise and recite (Wesseloo, 2015). A slogan is a core component of a brand, introducing dynamics and increasing brand equity in an effective and convenient way, i.e. it makes the brand special and acts as a useful hook, helping customers understand the meaning of the brand (Bovée and Arens, 1992). A slogan and a logo are two elements essential for improving brand identity (Kohli et al., 2013). A slogan also plays a role in delivering messages for brand building in customers’ minds. If a business develops a positive and memorable slogan, they can gain an advantage in customers’ minds and potentially enhance customers’ loyalty. The objective of developing a slogan is to facilitate customers’ information memory towards a brand and information concerning that specific brand (Reece, 1984). Consequently, as slogans are tools to grab consumers’ attention and deepen their memory about brands (Michalik and Michalska-Suchanek, 2016), they help customers recall and recognise particular brands (Cheema et al., 2016).
While various studies emphasise the importance of advertising slogans, Jun and Lee (2007) suggested that further study of slogans and brands could be targeted at consumer purchase behaviour and advertising strategies. This study contributes to this wider understanding of the role of slogans and brands in purchase behaviour.
This investigation aims to identify young consumers’ perception of the influence of slogans on their purchase behaviour. Using the customer decision process (CDP) model, we explore the stages when slogans gain and/or lose importance/decisive power. Treating customer’s recall and recognition as moderators of slogans’ influence on purchase behaviour, this paper investigates the features of slogans, determining their power. As we believe consumers’ awareness in most cases does not differentiate slogans, jingles and “earworms”, we treat slogans as a wider concept incorporating these elements. We thus investigate the specific characteristics of slogans determined by the respondents.
Following this brief introduction, the literature review discusses key interdependencies between slogans, brand perceptions and brand...