The impact of visual appearance on brand image

Abstract -  The topic of the thesis paper is “Impacts of laptop‟s visual appearance on its brand image among college students”. Both secondary and primary research methods were used in the writing of this paper. In this paper, the secondary research aims to review published literature materials from libraries and the Internet. Main theories in this area were about the implications of visual appearance, brand associations that build up the brand image and the components of brand image. The primary research includes interviews with ten college students. The aim of the primary research is to examine the existence of the six implications of laptop‟s appearance, and attempt to explore what kind of associations, that were able to affect the brand image of certain laptop, were aroused in college students‟ minds. Since the research is only focus on the laptop‟s visual appearance and on college students, the results of this thesis may not apply to other electronic devices or other customer segments. Since the number of the interviewees is limited, the results do not represent the perspectives of all the college students. This paper endorses that laptop‟s visual appearance possesses six implications: attention drawing ability, communication of aesthetic value, communication of symbolic meaning, communication of functional value, communication of ergonomic information and establishing recognition for the brand. Influenced by these implications, the college students were able to perceive messages delivered by the brands through the laptops‟ visual appearances. Thus valuable brand associations, which influence the brand images, were aroused among the students.

Author: Gu Mingya
Title: The impact of visual appearance on brand image Supervisor (Arcada): Sveinn Eldon
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