The Importance Of Logo Design On Branding: Analysis Report

Concept of Logos and its Importance on Brand Development

Question:

Write an essay on Importance of Logo Re-designing on Branding.

The purpose of this report is to analyse the importance of logo design or redesigning on branding. A logo can be understood as graphic design, symbol or emblem that is generally used by business organization, commercial entities, or other institutions that aids in brand development and public recognition. Logos can be pure graphic (symbols and icons), words or combination of both (Machado et al., 2014).  Logos can be understood as embodiment of the brand or organization. Colors in the logos can be an essential component in the logo designs as it represents vibrancy and helps in brand differentiation. For example, the color scheme used in logo of Google are used intentionally as part of Google’s image of being innovative and going against the established rule (primary colors + secondary colors = “break the rule”) (Sääksjärvi et al., 2015)

The report undertakes complete analysis of the research in the field of logo redesign and its impact on the branding of the company or organization so that the companies would have better understanding of the logos on the success of organizations. The structure of this assignment is as follows - the section 1 of this assignment covers the introduction part and discusses the concept of logos, its characteristics and its importance on the brand development. This is followed by problem statement, research objectives and justification of the research proposal and expected outcomes. In section 2, the conceptual framework, research hypothesis and methodology of the research is discussed. Finally, in the section 3 of the research report organizational study, grant charts and budget requirements are discussed.

Logo design is an important brand building activity undertaken by business organization to create a sense of identity and image for the brand. Logo design is an crucial element of direct and indirect marketing communication employed by the organization. Logo design reflects in every part of business activity and marketing communication used by the organizations. Logos are used by organizations in packaging, promotional materials, advertising, uniforms, and business communication methods such as letterheads, business cards, etc. (Van & Das, 2016).

When business organizations implement new business strategies that requires to redefine business missions and objectives, or the current logo does not achieves the desired end results, and when the company undertakes rebranding to shed its past image and wants to present itself in the new manner it becomes important to redesign its logos. However, the logo design must be undertaken with utmost caution, as it is associated with perception of the users with the brand and can negatively affect the brand image and organization if not carried out effectively (Drori et al., 2013).

The overall aim of the research is to investigate the impact of brand redesign on branding. More specifically the report aims to cover the following research questions –

• How does logo redesign affects branding?
• What are the implications of logo redesign on the branding?
• What factors needs to be considered in logo redesign in brand promotion?

These research questions would assist in the development understanding of the impact of logo redesign on branding (Machado et al., 2015).

Logo Redesigning

In order to develop greater brand recognition and global brands, organizations are striving to connect with its stakeholders and community at large by evoking emotions and associating them with the in such a manner that can be sustained for a longer periods of time irrespective of geographical limitations or other limitations. In this regard, organizations companies rely on logos to create awareness about the brand (Sääksjärvi et al., 2015).

A logo being the intangible aspect of a brand is a important part of brand and helps in brand recognition in more powerful manner as it triggers association of the brand by evoking associated memories with the targeted brand. Logo creates strong impression on the individuals as human mind perceives and remembers graphic more easily.  However, once the brand logo gets registered in the minds of the customers, it is difficult to erase the memory and the companies who have redesigned their logos have to undertake massive marketing communication expenditure to create a new identity of itself in the minds of the customers and other targeted audiences (Park et al., 2013).

Due to the level of expenditure involved in the redesigning and enforcing the logo in the minds of the customers, it is important to analyze the limitations of the existing logo and  redesigning the logo would overcome those limitations.

While redesigning its logo, it is important to analyze the impact of it on the targeted audience, competitors and the usefulness of the logo redesigning.

Through this report, the impact of logo redesigning on the branding can be better understood as the report undertakes an analytical approach to investigate the relationship between logo and branding. With the help of adopting an appropriate research methodology and analysis of the important data, the report would shed light on the research questions raised in the report. 

Logo plays an important role in branding and serves the purpose of indirect communication for the brand. Logos plays an important role in branding activities as it helps in creating brand awareness and easy recognition among the customers. A good logo should be simple so that it can be easily understood, must be able to create a positive impact, memorable and should be able to truly represent the organization’s personality and characteristics. The importance in branding also becomes more crucial due to the reason that it can be easily reproduced in any format as required by the company such as on product packaging, in advertisements, company merchandises, staffs’ uniforms, etc. A goods logo enables the organization to achieve harmonious relationship with the customers by artistically representing the overall brand promise and personality of the company (Budakov, 2014).

Logos are important for brand development and brand recognition among the public. The whole personality of the brand can be represented with the help of logos. Since the logos represents the identity of the brand and fosters brand recognition among the customers, it is counterproductive for the organizations that change its logos more frequently (Müller et al., 2013).

The purpose of logo is to connect the brand with some graphic or symbol that can uniquely and creatively represent the brand. Therefore, it can be said that a logo serves two major functions for the brand. One function of logo is that it acts as a conjunction between the brand name and product functionality, and the second function is that a logo can be used interchangeably with the name of the brand and evoking the same response from the customers. However, it has been opined Folse et al., (2013), that logos are needed to be redesigned or changed after a particular period. The reason that has been argued for the redesign of the logo is that with passage of time, people’s taste also changes. The market as well as the people’s point of view is dynamic. In order to keep p[ace with this dynamic environment, it is important to keep bringing changes. Logos are itself made attractive and if it fails to draw the attention of the consumers then there will be no evident reason of the particular logo (Folse et al., 2013).

Impact of Brand Redesign on Branding

In correspondence to this approach, it has been pointed out that sometimes redesigning a logo abolishes the actual existence of the company. As stated by Van & Das (2014), that redesigning creates a negative impact on the consumers. It is often assumed by them that the company’s ownership or privatization has changed. This change has forced the new operators to take a step to redefine the structure of the logo. Thus, a dilemma is often created among the consumers. They fear of buying the product henceforth, with an assumption that the product delivered now would not be good enough to satisfy their expectation from the company (Van & Das, 2014).

There is no particular time framed for a company to redesign their logo. It probably depends on the intuition of the owner or the higher authority of the company that forces them to change the logo. However, it can be said that there is a difference between redesigning and recreating a logo. It is not necessarily eligible that every time when the company feels like bringing a change in their logo, it needs to change the complete design of the logo. Sometimes, it is also expected that the company opted for only a small change in their logo. For instance, a change in the color of the design or introduction of a small sign or symbol in the logo is also adapted by the companies as a method of changing the logo (Grobert et al., 2016).

A logo acts as a communication medium between the company and the consumers. It is with the help of a logo, a company can be easily recognized by the consumers. It is in fact used to differentiate companies of same types. For example, two or more petroleum companies can be easily segregated by looking at their logo. Thus, a unique and an attractive logo create a positive impact among the consumers (Cesar et al., 2013).

It can be easily said that there are both positive and negative aspects of designing or redesigning a logo of the company. At one instance, it is an identity for an organization and it is very important to have a logo, on the other hand, bringing change in the logo the company can cause negative impact on the company (Robson & McCartan, 2016).

Based on the research objectives and problem statement discussed in the study following research hypothesis can be proposed that would be tested in the research study –

• H (1): Null Hypothesis: Logos does not have any influence on the branding
• H (2): Alternate Hypothesis: Logos have great influence on the branding

Research methodology represents various activities that is required to be undertaken to successfully complete the research. Research methodology provides a basic framework that would assist the researcher systematically complete the research and provides an overview of elements of the entire research. It includes research approach, research design, as well as data collection methods to complete the research so that research objectives are met.

The objective of this report is to access the impact of logo redesign on branding. Therefore, for this research positivism research approach is selected. In order to match with the research objective, deductive research methodology and descriptive design of research is selected to complete the research. Further, for this research elements of both qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis have been selected. Non probabilistic methods of data selection is selected to get the desired data to validate the findings of the research (Taylor et al., 2015).

Importance of Logo in Branding Activities

For this research, report following methodology would be undertaken to effectively analyze the aims of this research proposal. The various methodology employed are discussed as –

Literature review: to understand the impact of logo redesign on branding, review of existing literature such as journal, previous researches, and works of academicians are reviewed. 

Survey Questionnaires: survey questionnaires would be used to get the relationship between brand redesign and branding from marketing experts, working professionals as well as from the customers (Mackey & Gass, 2015).

There are two basic research approaches to follow as inductive and deductive research approach. Inductive approach of research follows observation of research subject, collection of primary and secondary data, analysis of collected data and establishment of theories at the end of research. In deductive approach the researcher first develops theories, then goes to hypothesis testing through analysis of data and to support or prove his theories and selecting the theory which qualifies the theoretical evidences (Hair et al., 2015). 

For this research deductive approached is used to establish the relationship between logo redesign and branding by studying the behavioral patterns of customers and their perceived effectiveness of the logo change while making a decision of new product purchase and risk perceptions involved therein (Flick, 2015).

Research design is the process of documenting the research study to present the data analysis in a manner to get a meaningful outcome. There are three main research designs as exploratory, explanatory and descriptive.

Exploratory research design is used when the objective of research is not clear. It helps to highlight what is the actual problem and hidden facts upon which research is to be based. In explanatory research design the main focus is on the reason of the problem. Such as why something is happening or not happening. Whereas in descriptive research the researcher just highlights the problems in detail and focuses on its findings.

In this study the research wants to highlight on the nature of relationship between logo designing and branding therefore; descriptive research design is undertaken (Panneerselvam, 2014).

Various steps that needs to be undertaken to complete the research are discussed as –

• Defining the topic of research and narrowing it down in such a manner to achieve research objectives
• Devising strategies to collect relevant data to meet the criteria of the research objective
• Determining the sampling methods and sample size to collect the desired data

For this research various research design requirements are disused in detail under the following headings.

Data collection is the method of getting information to form basis of research. Research. There are two modes of collecting data primary and secondary. In primary method data is collected directly from interest groups by the researcher himself like interviews, surveys, etc. whereas in secondary data collection researchers used data collected by some other sources like magazines, journals, etc. (Vinhal et al. 2012).

For this research study, both primary and secondary methods of data collection would be used. Primary data would be collected directly from the customers, business professionals, and marketing experts to evaluate the effectiveness of logo redesigning on the branding. In order to collect the desired data, survey questionnaires are developed that would be sent to the identified respondents via online mediums (e-mails), apart from online survey questionnaires, data would be collected from some key respondents (marketing and branding experts) to validate the data collection method. In addition, secondary data can be collected from academic articles, magazines, and works of previous researchers and scholars.

Sampling is the process of selecting a subset from the universe to get the data. A sample is smaller but homogeneous representation of population. The two most common types of sampling methods are probabilistic and non-probabilistic. In probabilistic sampling, every member of population have equal chance of getting selected Sample is random, stratified and multi clustered based on some criteria, On the other hand in non probabilistic sampling every member does not have equal chance of getting selected, data is collected on the basis of convenience, purpose and quota assigned by the researcher (Zikmund et al., 2012).

For the purpose of this research, probabilistic sampling technique is used. The purpose of selecting non-probabilistic sampling is that, the research requires information about the impact of logo redesigning on the branding; that can be accessed by analyzing diverse group of respondents. Therefore, to include desired respondents in the data collection Quota sampling method of non-probabilistic would be employed.

Sample size refers to the number of respondents participated in the primary data collection procedure. For this research, a sample size of 100 is chosen according to the quota assigned for identified respondent categories. 60 responses from the customer group, 30 responses from the marketing professionals category and 10 responses from the marketing experts.Research Method

Generally there are two methods for conducting research; quantitative and qualitative. For this research qualitative research method would be employed as data collected from survey questionnaires and interview questions have to be quantified with the help of various quantitative tools to enable the readers to get a clear understanding of the research findings (Bryman & Bell, 2015).

Consideration of ethical issues is important for validating the research study and its results. It helps in verifying the consistency and authenticity of the research study on the basis of genuine data collected from the respondents. The data collected for this study will be strictly be used for academic purposes. The questionnaire has been designed in such a way so that no personal questions are asked to the respondents. Convenience and willingness of the respondents to participate in the survey are considered. The information will be kept confidential and the referencing style adopted in this research study has helped in validating the data (Blumberg et al., 2014).

The organization of the final research can be presented as –

• Chapter one of the study will be research proposal as discussed in this assignment
• Chapter two of the research would describe the case study of logo resigning on the branding
• Chapter three of the research would include the details of research methodology that include literature review, data collection methods, and defining the key indicators of logo designing and also methods of data collection.
• Chapter four of the research would comprise the findings and analysis of the proposed report
• Chapter five will summarize the important findings of the report and would discuss its implication undertaking logo redesigns on branding.

Task description	Start day	End day	Duration
Report proposal	1//6/2016	15/6/2016	15 days
Literature review	16/6/2016	15/7/2016	30 days
Data collection	16/7/2016	15/8/2016	30 days
Data analysis	16/8/2016	20/8/2016	15 days
Final report submission	1/9/2016	15/9/2016	15 days

Project Budget and Budget Justification

In order to, successfully undertake this research it is important to make provisions for the budget requirements. The proposed budget for the research is $3500 that would be utilized to perform various activities to successfully complete the research study on the stipulated time (1/9/2016).

The budget would be employed to undertake following research tasks:

• The literature review would require various textbooks, journals, academic articles and other online resources that is not freely available and would cost around $1300
• Data collection is another research related activity that requires extensive time and financial resources. Data collection includes travelling expenses, questionnaire printing costs, and other associated costs. This would require a budget of $2000
• For data analysis, part access to various software and statistical tools would be required. This would cost around $1700.

This has been summarized as -

Purpose	Estimated Costs ($)
Literature Review	1,300
Data collection	2,000
Data analysis	1,700
Total budget estimated	3,500

References

Blumberg, B. F., Cooper, D. R., & Schindler, P. S. (2014). Business research methods. McGraw-hill education.

Bryman, A., & Bell, E. (2015). Business research methods. Oxford University Press, USA.

Cesar-Machado, J., Vacas-de-Carvalho, L., Torres, A., & Costa, P. (2013). Brand logo design: Examining consumer response to figurativeness.

Drori, G. S., Delmestri, G., & Oberg, A. (2013). Branding the university: Relational strategy of identity construction in a competitive field. Trust in higher education institutions, 134-147.

Flick, U. (2015). Introducing research methodology: A beginner's guide to doing a research project. Sage.

Folse, J. A. G., Burton, S., & Netemeyer, R. G. (2013). Defending brands: Effects of alignment of spokescharacter personality traits and corporate transgressions on brand trust and attitudes. Journal of Advertising, 42(4), 331-342.

Girard, T., Anitsal, M. M., & Anitsal, I. (2013). The role of logos in building brand awareness and performance: Implications for entrepreneurs. The Entrepreneurial Executive, 18, 7.

Hair Jr, J. F., Wolfinbarger, M., Money, A. H., Samouel, P., & Page, M. J. (2015). Essentials of business research methods. Routledge.

Machado, J. C., de Carvalho, L. V., Torres, A., & Costa, P. (2015). Brand logo design: examining consumer response to naturalness. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 24(1), 78-87.

Mackey, A., & Gass, S. M. (2015). Second language research: Methodology and design. Routledge.

Müller, B., Kocher, B., & Crettaz, A. (2013). The effects of visual rejuvenation through brand logos. Journal of Business Research, 66(1), 82-88.

Panneerselvam, R. (2014). Research methodology. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd..

Park, C. W., Eisingerich, A. B., Pol, G., & Park, J. W. (2013). The role of brand logos in firm performance. Journal of Business Research, 66(2), 180-187.

Robson, C., & McCartan, K. (2016). Real world research. Wiley.

Sääksjärvi, M., van den Hende, E., Mugge, R., & van Peursem, N. (2015). How exposure to logos and logo varieties fosters brand prominence and freshness. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 24(7), 736-744.

Taylor, S. J., Bogdan, R., & DeVault, M. (2015). Introduction to qualitative research methods: A guidebook and resource. John Wiley & Sons.

van Grinsven, B., & Das, E. (2014). Logo design in marketing communications: Brand logo complexity moderates exposure effects on brand recognition and brand attitude. Journal of Marketing Communications, 1-15.

van Grinsven, B., & Das, E. (2015). Processing different degrees of logo change: When higher levels of brand consciousness decrease openness to substantial logo changes. European Journal of Marketing, 49(11/12), 1710-1727.

Zikmund, W., Babin, B., Carr, J., & Griffin, M. (2012). Business research methods. Cengage Learning.

Machado, J. C., Vacas de Carvalho, L., Torres, A., Van de Velden, M., & Costa, P. (2014). Logo design: examining consumer response to figurativeness across cultures.