Hunts,Heinz, and Fries Priming ‘Ketchup’: The Effects of Lexicality on Brand Name–Product Associations and Brand Memory

Brand names should be memorable and easy to associate with the product. The present study investigated how brand name lexicality affects accessibility in memory. In Experiment 1, participants completed a primed lexical decision task (LDT) in which primes were real‐word brands (RWB; e.g., SATURN), nonword brands (NWB; e.g., KIA), or semantic associates (e.g., TIRE) and targets were product categories (e.g., car). NWB primes resulted in equivalent priming as semantic primes and were recalled more than RWBs in a free‐recall task. In Experiment 2, participants completed an unprimed LDT or brand decision task (BDT). In LDT, high NWB error rates reflected greater familiarity. In BDT, many RWBs were not recognized as brands. In Experiment 3, a primed BDT with brand names as targets indicated that NWBs and RWBs are equally primed by a related category label. Overall, NWBs appear to be more familiar and memorable, possibly because of distinctiveness. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.