Trademark and the Perception of the Value of Merchandise. An Experimental Study of Trade Goods
Abstract
The purpose of the work was to carry out an experimental study on the significance of the value of trademark in the perception of a particular type of trade goods. The subject-matter of the study consists of hypothetical situations in which people choose the same cars but labeled with the trademark of some highly valued firms, such as Peugeot, and those labeled with the trademark of less renown firms, eg. FSM.
The results of the experiments allowed, in the light of the cognitive-motivative conception of trademark, to present data from the point of view of the relation of similarity which was defined by the incidence of choices. From the letter the coefficient of the preference rate has been deduced. It has been reported that articles labeled in the same manner with the well-known and valuable trademark become more similar in the consumer’s cognitive representation than the articles with an unknown trademark, even if the articles in question seem to be barely similar. The results are very much in line with the contemporary investigations into the making of concepts. There is a tendency to blur the differences between trade goods and to make eminent their similar qualities in the process of forming the cognitive scheme.
The paper has also drawn out attention to some practical consequences of the obtained results. The latter refers to the use of norms concerning coming up against dishonest competition for the sake of the protection of trademarks. In view of the latter the methodology of research have been worked out would allow to decide the ability to differentiate trademark in the cognitive structure of the recipient. The empirical research embraces a very narrow range of the situations of choice. Despite that, in the light of the broad, taken in its adaptive approach, analysis of the market and of the psychological mechanisms which contribute to the making of a cognitive representation of trademark, those researches may be treated as an exemplification of general laws which define the relation between trademark and trade goods in the consumer’s reaction.
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