Logos: With or Without Slogan. The Effects of Different Levels of Verbal Anchoring in Logos on Dutch and French Donors.
Steinkühler, Sören D. Radboud University Nijmegen
24 / 01 / 2020
Author Note s1025171
1st Reviewer: Prof. A.P.J.V. Van Hooft 2nd Reviewer: Prof. L. Speed
Abstract
Logos make organizations recognizable and can communicate their core value. Thus, their message must be clear. Verbal anchoring can help clarify this message. Previous studies focussed on verbal anchoring in ads, while this study focuses on non-profit organizations, as their core values are their product and thus have to be communicated ever more clearly. This study focused on the logos of three different non-profit organizations – Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross, and UNICEF – and researched how different levels of verbal anchoring affected the logo recognition, appreciation, perceived fit of logo and core values, and donation intention. In addition, as culture was a potential variable, this study included both Dutch and French respondents. However, culture had no significant effect on the perception of the logos by the respondents.
Higher levels of verbal anchoring had a positively influenced recognition and
perceived core value fit (when complete), but did not affect appreciation of the logos and had a negative effect on Dutch respondent’s donation intention.
Keywords: logos, verbal anchoring, non-profit organizations, recognition, appreciation, intention to donate, perceived fit of core values
Introduction
A logo identifies a sender clearly. (Park, Eisingerich, Pol, & Park, 2013; Foroudi, Melewar, & Gupta, 2017). The right logo can be a great asset, as it distinguishes the company and can communicate a great deal about it. (Foroudi et al., 2017). Similarly, a logo can
influence the perception of customers and can, if perceived as attractive and fitting, even positively influence the purchase intention of said customers (Fajardo, Zhang, & Tsiros, 2016).
On the other hand, linguistic messages have, according to Barthes (1977), the distinct ability to help viewers identify and interpret the image they accompany. The linguistic message clarifies the image and the message it is supposed to communicate, making it more effective in the process. This function, defined by Barthes as anchorage, will be referred to as verbal anchoring over the course of this study. Further studies confirmed that the combination of logo and organization name together were more attractive than alone (Bresciani & Del Ponte, 2017) and that logos were ineffective at communicating an organization’s core values on their own (Van Hooft, Wiskerke, & Brink, 2007).
Most of this research, however, has focussed either logos in ads or logos in the
corporate context, however, the effects of different levels of verbal anchoring in logos of non-profit organizations has not received as much attention. As charities do not have a product that their logos can be associated with and are dependent on donations – which in turn depend on previous donation behaviour and donor’s attitude towards the organization (Kashif,
Sarifuddin, & Hassan, 2015) – the ability of their logos to communicate their core values becomes all the more important. In addition, the level of context in the communication has been found to differ between cultures (Hall, 1976; Hall & Hall, 1990), which in turn might affect their perceptions of different levels of verbal anchoring. This study was thus focussed on the effects of different levels of verbal anchoring on the recognition and appreciation of
logos, perceived fit of logo and core values, and donation intention of Dutch and French potential donors of three non-profit organizations.
Theoretical Foundation
A logo fulfils multiple important function for the company by which it is used. According to Van Hooft et al. (2007), a logo has to fulfil multiple functions, among them identifying it’s sender (making it clear, whom to associate with an ad, a website, a product etc.) and evoking positive associations, so that the brand that uses the logo likewise profits from these positive associations. Probably the most important among these associations are the core values of a company, the central values and ideas, which a company stands for (or wants to stand for). However, according to Van Hooft et al. (2007), logos alone are generally not successful in communicating the core values, as customer’s first association with a logo are usually the products instead of the values of a company. The image of the logo alone is not enough.
According to Barthes (1977), the influence of words, especially on images, cannot be understated. The theory of verbal anchoring, that linguistic messages can ‘anchor’ an image to a phrase, concept, or value, means that, in theory, any image can only profit from linguistic messages accompanying it. By this rationale, a logo should always be used in concert with a slogan, for it would be much stronger with it than without.
The research done by Bresciani & Del Ponte (2017) similarly shows, that the combination of logo and brand name is more effective than either on their own in terms of recognition and that logos can evoke affective reactions about the brand in customers, strengthening the previous point that the combination of visual and linguistic elements poses and advantage for a company.
However, Phillips (2000) shows a more nuanced picture. While it is true that comprehension of an ad and the message it tells improved with higher levels of verbal
anchoring used the likeability of the ad declined when full instead of moderate verbal anchoring was used. Phillips named the higher effort in terms of time and processing power imposed on the reader as a possible reason for this. Bergkvist, Eiderbäck, & Palombo (2012) used three levels of verbal anchoring (none, moderate, complete) instead of the two levels (moderate and complete) used by Phillips. According to their results, ads with complete verbal anchoring were the most successful at improving the attitude towards the organization.
Logos, however, are fundamentally different from ads, and thus these results might not apply.. As a logo has to embody all core values of a brand or an organization (Park et al., 2013; Foroudi et al., 2017) – conversely to an ad, in which the focus lies on one product – the level of verbal anchoring for a logo would have to be that much higher, with the assumed negative effect on likeability that accompanies ads with high levels of verbal anchoring (compare Phillips, 2000). The results of the aforementioned studies can thus not be translated one-to-one to logos, which in turn leads to a research gap concerning the effect of different levels of verbal anchoring in logos.
The previous studies, however, were mainly focussed on the corporate context, which often combined either the use of verbal anchoring in ads (Phillips, 2000; Bergkvist et al., 2012) and showed that the associations created by logos were often more tied to the products than the core values of the companies in question (Van Hooft et al., 2007; Das & Van Hooft, 2015). However, little research so far has focussed on companies that don’t per se have products, such as charities.
Their communication cannot focus on one specific aspect of their product, as their core values effectively are their product, which could theoretically lead to a vastly different effect of different levels of verbal anchoring in their communication. Furthermore, charities are dependent on the donations they receive, however, previous research has mainly focussed on the way previous donations and current attitude towards and organization influenced the
intention to donate (Kashif et al., 2015). This can – to an extent – be put in combination with the research of Fajardo et al. (2016), who focussed on the influence of personal preference as well as risk on the purchase intention of customers. Their results showed, that customers were generally adverse towards risk and preferred to have as complete information as possible before making their decision. The combination of these studies indicates, that a high appreciation of an organization and clear understanding of their values positively affects donations. This makes research into the effectiveness of different levels of verbal anchoring in combination with logos especially interesting for organizations reliant on the clear
communication of their core values and their association with them.
An additional difference between non-profits and for-profits is that the name of non-profit organizations often is a core value or mission statement in itself, examples being
organizations like ‘Doctors Without Borders’, ‘Greenpeace’, or the ‘World Wildlife Fund’ (WWF), compared to e.g the name of the company founder (Krupp, Adidas [portmanteau of founder Adolf ‘Adi’ Dassler’s first and last name]), or the name of the place of origin (BMW [Bavarian motor works], Bayer). Thus, a combination of their name and their logo, as often seen in their communication, can already count as verbal anchoring – which has been found to have a positive effect in regards to the perceived attractiveness of corporate logos (Bresciani & Del Ponte, 2017; Foroudi et al., 2017). As such, research into the effect of verbal anchoring on potential donor’s recognition and appreciation of the organization, the perceived fit of the organizations logo and core values, and their donation intention seems warranted.
While differences in the level of verbal anchoring accompanying a logo or the difference between logos communicating core values and ads communicating one specific message are worthy of research, different communication styles might also have an impact on the perception of logos and the verbal anchoring accompanying them. Differences in
Hall & Hall, 1990; Richardson & Smith, 2007), however, this also means that these cultural differences in communication style might have an effect on the evaluation of different levels of verbal anchoring by members of different cultures. This is especially important given the multinational nature of the organizations – and thus the potential donors – chosen for this study. Similar to the research gap in regards to non-profit organizations, there exists a research gap in regards to the different perception and acceptance of logos with different levels of verbal anchoring in cultures with a different level of context in their
communications. For the purpose of this study, the Netherlands and France (or the Dutch and French culture, respectively) were chosen. Hall (1976) classifies the French as a culture of high-context communication, whereas Dutch communication classifies as low-context. These differences in culture would lead to the assumption that the degree of verbal anchoring in logos has different effects for the two cultures in question, specifically that a high-context culture like the French would appreciate lower levels of verbal anchoring more, whereas a low-context culture like the Dutch would appreciate higher levels of verbal anchoring more. While studies on the effects of cultural dimensions on ads exist (Diehl, Terlutter, & Weinberg, 2003), to the knowledge of this researcher, no such studies exist as of yet on the effects of cultural dimensions on logos.
The theoretical overview presented in this literature review leads to the following set of research questions and hypotheses:
H1: Logos presented with the organization name and a fitting slogan (complete verbal anchoring) are evaluated more favourably by Dutch donors than logos presented without (no verbal anchoring) or only with the organization name (moderate verbal anchoring), but are evaluated less favourably by French donors.
organizations affect the recognition of the logos and organizations of French and Dutch potential donors?
RQ2: To what extent does the level of verbal anchoring in logos of non-profit organizations affect the appreciation of the organizations of French and Dutch potential donors?
RQ3: To what extent does the level of verbal anchoring in logos of non-profit organizations affect the perceived fit of the logos and organizational core values of French and Dutch potential donors?
RQ4: To what extent does the level of verbal anchoring in logos of non-profit organizations affect the donation intention of Dutch and French potential donors?
Method Material
Three levels of verbal anchoring were chosen – no verbal anchoring, moderate verbal anchoring, complete verbal anchoring. ‘No verbal anchoring’ in this case means, that
participants only saw the logo of the organization, ‘moderate verbal anchoring’ means they saw the logo in conjunction with the organization name. Finally, ‘complete verbal anchoring’ means they saw the logo, the organization name, and a slogan in their own language. For the groups that saw logos with complete verbal anchoring, slogans in their native language were chosen to eliminate misinterpretations of the slogans based on a foreign language. The decision to include the name of an organization as a level of verbal anchoring is unique to non-profit organizations, as they generally chose their goal or mission statement as a name, contrary to, for example, the name of the founder. As such, the name of the organization is in itself a slogan and thus verbal anchoring. Table 1 shows the Dutch example of the logos of the organizations used in the study at different levels of verbal anchoring.
Table 1. Dutch logos of organizations and compared by level of verbal anchoring Doctors Without Borders Red Cross UNICEF No verbal anchoring Moderate verbal anchoring Complete verbal anchoring
The three non-profit organizations – Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross and UNICEF – were chosen based on their size, their existence in both target countries/cultures, and the absence of any ideologies or scandals that could change the perception of the
organization aside from the logo and slogan. The names and slogans of the organizations were taken from the respective websites of Doctors Without Borders1, the Red Cross2, and
UNICEF3. An exception from this is the French slogan of Doctors Without Borders, which could not be found. Thus, the Dutch slogan was translated into French, to present the same slogan in both languages. An additional outlier is the difference in the presentation of the logo and slogan of the Red Cross. Table 2 shows the two different logos. The decision to include the actual logo instead of aligning on logo with the other was made to ensure recognition of the actual logos by participants of the corresponding nationality.
Table 2. Dutch and French logo of the Red Cross
Dutch French Moderate verbal anchoring Complete verbal anchoring 1 https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/ 2 https://www.rodekruis.nl/ 3 https://www.unicef.nl/
Participants
The sample was based on convenience (the researchers contacted friends, fellow students etc. and asked them to spread the questionnaire further) and voluntary participation (subjects did not have to participate). A total of 250 participants filled out the questionnaire for this experiment, 47 of which did not finish it. This left a total sample size of 203
participants. Of those participants, 96 were of Dutch and 107 of French nationality, ranging in age from 18-34. The sample contained slightly (but not significantly) more female (102) than male (93) participants, while 8 participants chose not to name their gender. It took participants and average of 11 minutes and 38 seconds to complete the questionnaire. Only participants with Dutch or French nationality were chosen to keep the cultural distinctions as intact as possible. Additionally, homogeneity in educational level was ensured by drawing the sample from university students.
The homogeneity of the groups in terms of gender, education and age was ensured by the use of χ²-tests and ANOVAs, respectively. A one-way ANOVA showed a significant difference between the two nationalities in terms of age (F (2, 188) = 4.84, p = .029). Dutch participants were significantly older (M = 21.93, SD = 2.79) than French participants (M = 21.05, SD = 2.75). However, while significant statistically, this effect was judged not to be necessarily relevant in this case as the mean age differed by less than a year between the two nationalities. A one-way ANOVA showed no significant differences between the different conditions in terms of age (F (2, 187) = 0.30, p = .739). A Chi-square test showed no significant differences in the distributions of nationality and condition (χ² = 1.56, p = .458). Likewise, the distribution of gender was equal across nationality (χ² = 0.39, p = .530) and condition (χ² = 1.04, p = .596). The level of education differed significantly between
nationalities (χ² = 49.53, p < .001). Of the 93 Dutch respondents who provided information in regards to their education, the majority (57 participants / 61.3%) possessed a university
degree, while 15 participants (16.1%) possessed a degree from a university of applied sciences. The remaining participants possessed a level of basic education (1 / 1.1%), a high-school diploma (11 / 11.8%), or vocational training (9 / 9.7%). Of the French 102 respondents who provided data to their education, 26 (25.5%) possessed a Master-level degree, while 61 (59.8%) had obtained a licence, the equivalent to a bachelor’s degree. No participants reported primary education as their highest attained level, while 1 (1.0%) reported a middle-school diploma and 14 (13.7%) reported a high-middle-school diploma as their highest level of education. However, the level of education of participants did not differ significantly across conditions (χ² = 8.07, p = 4.27), so the difference in education between the two nationalities was recorded as a possible limitation, but not further included in the study, as this discrepancy might have simply stemmed from differences in the education systems, where the Dutch questionnaire made a difference between a degree from a university of applied sciences and a university, while the same step in the French questionnaire was the difference between a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. Table 3 shows the distribution of the final participants across the two different nationalities and the three levels of verbal anchoring.
Table 3. Distribution of participant groups across nationalities and conditions. Dutch N = 96 French N = 107 No verbal anchoring 32 29 Moderate verbal anchoring 31 43 Complete verbal anchoring 33 35
Research design
. A 3x2 between-subjects design was chosen with three levels of verbal anchoring and two different nationalities/cultures, resulting in a total of 6 groups (one per level of verbal anchoring per culture). Each group was saw logos of all three organizations, but only one level of verbal anchoring. The questionnaire did not differ between the groups otherwise. Instruments
. Two language versions of the questionnaire were posed to the participants to measure the dependent variables recognition, appreciation, perceived fit, donation intention and the variable culture. The variable “recognition” was tested by a simple yes/no question (“Do you recognise this logo?”). This question remained even for the groups that saw moderate or complete verbal anchoring – that is, the name or the organization – as control of the differences in levels of recognition is needed between groups. The variable “appreciation” was measured by use of the 7-point semantic differentials scale based on the scale used by Henderson & Cote (1998) and the 5 items ‘not fitting – fitting’, ‘bad – good’, ‘low quality – high quality’, ‘not fitting – fitting’, & ‘not interesting – interesting’. Cronbach’s α for “appreciation” was .887 for Doctors Without Borders, .845 for the Red Cross, and .870 for UNICEF (combined α of .867), making no exclusion of items necessary. The variable “perceived fit” was again tested with multiple questions, similar to Van Hooft et al. (2007); first with an open question (“What values do you associate with this logo?”), then with the question “How much do the following values fit the logo in your opinion?”, followed by a 7-point Likert scale (‘not at all’ – ‘completely’) & the core values of the three organizations (3 for Doctors Without Borders, 7 for the Red Cross, 5 for UNICEF). The α for “perceived fit” was .890 for Doctors Without Borders, .854 for the Red Cross, and .838 for UNICEF
(combined α of .861), making likewise no exclusion of items needed. The variable “intention to donate” was measured on a 7-point Likert scale based on Kashif et al.,(2015) (‘not at all
likely’ – ‘very likely’) with the statement “I am willing to donate money to this non-profit organization.”. Participants of one group always only saw logos with the same level of verbal anchoring, however, the sequence in which they were shown the logos varied between
participants, to reduce/eliminate cognitive bias in the group towards a logo. The level of context in the communication was measured by use of the 7-point Likert scale (‘completely disagree’ – ‘completely agree’) used by Richardson & Smith (2007) and the following 9 items: “A speaker should not expect a listener to understand what the speaker means by a message, unless the message is spelled out precisely.”, “One should be able to understand the meaning of a message by reading between the lines.”, “The meaning of a message is more about context than words.”, “It is more important to mention a message efficiently than with many details.”, “A speaker can assume that a listener will understand what he / she really means.”, “People understand many things from the context that are not said out loud.”,
“Fewer words can often lead to a better understanding of a message.”, “You can often transfer more information with fewer words.”, “Some ideas are better understood when they are not said out loud.”. The validity of the high-low context items was α=.68 after the exclusion of the three lowest-scoring items. This is under the acceptable .70, according to Cortina (1993). However, Cortina also states that even alphas over .7 can have a low inter-item correlation. The inter-item correlation for high-low context items was .201, which is within the accepted range of .2 - .4, according to Briggs & Cheek (1986). An independent sample t-test showed no significant differences in regards to the level of communication context between Dutch and French participants (t (191) = 0.45, p = .651). Dutch participants showed no higher or lower level of context in their communication (M = 4.38, SD = 0.75) than French participants (M = 4.43, SD = 0.84). In addition, culture did not have a significant effect on the results presented later in this study. Hence, the variable ‘culture’ will not be used from this point onward and only the nationalities of participants will be compared and mentioned.
Procedure
This study was conducted in November & December 2019 through a questionnaire in the online experiment tool Quatrics. The researchers reached out to friends, roommates, fellow students etc. to find participants directly or through the extended social circle of said contacts. Participants were provided with a link towards the questionnaire in their respective language (Dutch or French), which send them to one of three possible versions of the
questionnaire per language, differing only in the level of verbal anchoring presented in the logos there. This resulted in a total of 6 groups, with one Dutch and one French group each per level of verbal anchoring, the exact distribution of which was shown in table 3 in the method section.
Participants were informed about the background of the questionnaire as part of a Bachelor’s thesis and that the data they provided would be treated anonymously. They were neither compelled nor incentivised in any way to fill in the questionnaire, and were informed that they could abort the questionnaire at any point if they so wished. Appendices A and B contain the complete Dutch and French questionnaire, respectively. Participants answered the questionnaire about their recognition and appreciation of the logo, the perceived fit of the logo & the organization’s core values, and their donation. Finally, the questionnaire also included questions tailored to determine the level of context in their communication and if they adhered to the expected levels based on Hall’s (1976) findings. The questionnaire concluded with demographic questions for gender, age, nationality, and level of education, followed by a thank-you for taking part.
Statistical treatment
For donation intention and perceived fit, two-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were carried out, while a two-way univariate analysis of variance was carried out for appreciation. Bonferroni post-hoc tests were used for all analyses of variance used in the study.
Results Recognition
A Chi-square test showed a significant effect of verbal anchoring on recognition of the logos in Dutch (χ² (4) = 10.22, p = .037). Dutch respondents presented with complete verbal anchoring recognized the logo significantly more often (75.8%) than respondents presented with no verbal anchoring (43.8%). There was no significant difference in recognition between the aforementioned conditions and moderate verbal anchoring (67.7%). Similarly, a Chi-square test showed a significant effect of the level of verbal anchoring on logo recognition in French (χ² (4) = 20.87, p < .001). French respondents presented with incomplete (88.4%) and complete (74.4%) verbal anchoring recognized the logos significantly more often than respondents presented with no verbal anchoring (41.4%). Respondents of both nationalities recognized logos with moderate or complete verbal anchoring more often than logos without any verbal anchoring. Table 4 shows the differences in recognition between the Dutch and French donors at different levels of verbal anchoring.
Table 4. Level of recognition of logos at different levels of verbal anchoring by Dutch and French donors (in percent).
Dutch French
No verbal anchoring 43.8 41.4
Moderate verbal anchoring 67.7 88.4
Appreciation
A two-way univariate analysis of variance for appreciation with level of verbal anchoring and nationality showed no significant main effect based on either level of verbal anchoring (F (2, 197) = .53, p = .590) nor nationality of the respondent (F (1, 197) = 1.24, p = .268) on the appreciation of the logo. No significant interaction effect was found (F (2, 197) = 1.17, p = .312). Table 5 shows the means and standard deviations.
Table 5. Logo appreciation of Dutch and French donors. Dutch M (SD) French M (SD) Total M (SD) No verbal anchoring 4.97 (0.66) 4.84 (0.97) 4.91 (0.82) Moderate verbal anchoring 4.68 (0.92) 4.95 (0.95) 4.83 (0.94) Complete verbal anchoring 4.83 (0.67) 5.08 (0.76) 4.96 (0.72)
Perceived fit
A two-way univariate analysis of variance for perceived fit with level of verbal
anchoring and nationality showed a significant main effect based on level of verbal anchoring (F (2, 197) = 5.57, p = .004). Incomplete verbal anchoring (M = 4.93, SD = 1.00) negatively affected the perceived fit of logo and core values compared to complete verbal anchoring (M = 5.42, SD = 0.69). The results are shown in table 6 on the next page.
Table 6. Perceived fit of logo and core values of Dutch and French donors. Dutch M (SD) French M (SD) Total M (SD) No verbal anchoring 5.32 (0.62) 5.14 (1.15) 5.24 (0.90) Moderate verbal anchoring 4.93 (0.76) 4.93 (1.15) 4.93 (1.00) Complete verbal anchoring 5.36 (0.67) 5.48 (0.72) 5.42 (0.69)
There were no other significant effects based on level of verbal anchoring. The nationality of the respondent had no significant effect (F (1, 197) = 0.02, p = .877) on the perceived fit of logo and core values. No significant interaction effect was found (F (2, 197) = 0.46, p = .635).
Intention to donate
A two-way univariate analysis of variance for intention to donate with level of verbal anchoring and nationality showed no significant main effects based on either level of verbal anchoring (F (2, 197) = 1.54, p = .218) nor nationality of the respondent (F (1, 197) = 2.13, p = .146) alone.
However, there was a significant interaction effect between these two variables (F (2, 197) = 4.35, p = .014). Dutch respondents rated their donation intention significantly higher (M = 4.57, SD = 1.10) than French respondents (M = 3.57, SD = 1.41) when no verbal
anchoring was used. There were no further significant interaction effects. Table 7 on the next page shows the means and standard deviations of Dutch and French Donors.
Table 7. Intention to donate of Dutch and French donors. Dutch M (SD) French M (SD) No verbal anchoring 4.57 (1.10) 3.57 (1.41) Moderate verbal anchoring 4.38 (1.23) 4.22 (1.35) Complete verbal anchoring 4.30 (1.29) 4.66 (1.37) Total 4.42 (1.20) 4.19 (1.42)
Conclusion / Discussion
The purpose of this study was to research the effects of different levels of verbal anchoring on the recognition & appreciation of logos of non-profit organizations, as well as the effects on donation intention & perceived fit of logo and core values.
The answers to research question 1 (To what extent does the level of verbal anchoring in logos of non-profit organizations affect the recognition of the logos and organizations of French and Dutch potential donors?) are somewhat in line with previous predictions and indicate that Barthes (1977) was right. Recognition of the logos was positively affected by higher levels of verbal anchoring. However, this has to be taken with a grain of salt. As mentioned in the introduction, the moderate level of verbal anchoring consisted of the logo in combination with the name of the organization. So it is actually rather unexpected, that the level of recognition of Dutch respondents between no verbal anchoring and moderate verbal anchoring is not significantly higher. This might be explained by an already high level of recognition with no verbal anchoring.
Research question 2 (To what extent does the level of verbal anchoring in logos of non-profit organizations affect the appreciation of the organizations of French and Dutch potential donors?) can, based on the results, be easily answered. There seems to be no effect whatsoever on the appreciation of donors of both nationalities. But again, French respondents showed a tendency to evaluate higher levels of verbal anchoring more favourably, whereas Dutch respondents where the opposite. This seems odd, as previous results (e.g. Bresciani & Del Ponte, 2017; Foroudi et al., 2017) indicated a higher appreciation with higher levels of verbal anchoring. On the other hand, the non-difference in appreciation is also contradictory to Phillips’s (2000) argument that higher levels of verbal anchoring posed a higher effort to process them, thus affecting appreciation negatively. It is however possible, that this result is based on the fact that the aforementioned studies researched logos in the corporate context,
whereas this study focused on non-profit organizations. A future comparison between for-profit and non-for-profit organizations might clarify this discrepancy.
The answers to research question 3 (To what extent does the level ofverbal anchoring in logos of non-profit organizations affect the perceived fit of the logos and organizational core values of French and Dutch potential donors?) are somewhat puzzling. Incomplete verbal anchoring had the lowest effect on perceived fit of logo and core values, with complete verbal anchoring being significantly higher. This can be somewhat explained by the fact that
complete verbal anchoring can clarify core values or mission statement, while no verbal anchoring focuses the attention solely on the logo, thus maybe helping the communication of the message, but more research might be warranted to reach a more satisfying conclusion. Van Hooft et al. (2007) and Das & Van Hooft (2015) both analysed the degree to which logos communicated core values, however, their research again focused on the corporate context and the general success of logos, but not different levels of verbal anchoring.
Finally, the answers to research question 4 (To what extent does the level of verbal anchoring in logos of non-profit organizations affect the donation intention of Dutch and French potential donors?) show that neither a difference in nationality nor in level of verbal anchoring influenced the donation intention on its own. Only the interaction between those two variables produced an effect. The result is unexpected, as Dutch respondents rated their donation intention higher than their French counterparts when no verbal anchoring was used. Based on previous expectations, one would expect French respondents to react more
favourably to lower levels of verbal anchoring, yet this was not the case. The results are, if anything, contrary to expectations, as the donation intention for French participants increased with higher levels of verbal anchoring, whereas the Dutch donation intention decreased.
To summarize, verbal anchoring had a positive effect on recognition of logos
(supporting Van Hooft et al., 2007, and Das & Van Hooft, 2015, to an extent), no effect on appreciation of the logo (opposing Bresciani & Del Ponte, 2017, Foroudi et al., 2017, and Phillips, 2000), and an adverse effect on donation intention of Dutch respondents.
To revisit the start of this study, it seems that the hypothesis (Logos presented with the organization name and a fitting slogan (complete verbal anchoring) are evaluated more
favourably by Dutch donors than logos presented without (no verbal anchoring) or only with the organization name (moderate verbal anchoring), but are evaluated less favourably by French donors) is not supported. Higher levels of verbal anchoring did not impact Dutch donors’ apprecition, recognition, or perceived core value fit, any more significantly than French donors’. The only significant difference between the nationalities was a higher Dutch donation intention when no verbal anchoring was used, which is contrary to all previous expectations. This might indicate that the effect of the variable nationality/culture is not as strong as suspected, and may even be negligible.
However, this study possesses some limitations, indicating that there might be other possible reasons at play. The non-homogenous distribution of education and/or age between the two nationalities might have been a reason for this non-adherence to expectations. Similarly, the conscious choice of an age limitation of the sample might have been a reason. While the sample sizes for the different conditions were fairly equal, one sample fell below the 30-participants-minimum, albeit only by 1. While unlikely to have had an effect, it
nevertheless could have been a possible limitation. In addition, the expectations for high- and low-context cultures based on Hall (1976) were not met in this study, rather, there seemed to be no cultural difference on this level. Future studies could include other cultural dimensions, as they might yield results that did not exist between high- and low-context. While this study shows some positive effects of verbal anchoring in logos, the results ultimately remain contradictory and thus give no clear indications of possible practical applications.
Follow-up studies might be warranted to research if the effects reported in this study repeat upon further research within the same nationalities, or if these results are outliers. If similar results should continue to appear, this might be an indication that the current assessment of communication styles in the Dutch (low-context) and French (high-context) cultures might need to be re-evaluated. Additionally, future research could be focussed on different dimensions of culture, to compare and contrast with the results presented here.
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Appendices
Appendix A. Complete Qualtrics questionnaire, Dutch version (example with complete verbal anchoring).
Appendix B. Complete Qualtrics questionnaire, French version (example with moderate verbal anchoring)
Appendix C. Statement of own work. Sören David Steinkühler s1025171
