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“The logo of a brand is much more than a pictorial representation of the brand,” says Vikas Mittal, a marketing professor at Rice University who has co-authored two studies on customers, logos, and brand commitment. “For consumers who are highly committed to the brand, the logo represents a visual conduit that enables a customer to identify with the brand.

“Our studies have shown that highly committed consumers also have very high levels of brand attachment. As such, any changes to the brand conduit—the logo—are seen as a violation of the psychological contract between the brand and the consumer.”

Starbucks dropped both its name and the word “coffee” from its 40-year-old logo as the Seattle-based coffee chain prepares to triple its locations in China from about 400 to 1,500.

In one of his studies, Mittal found that companies that changed their logo design were most likely to estrange their most committed customers. A second study found that when angular logos were changed to rounded logos, they were more acceptable in interdependent and collectivist cultures—often found in Asian countries, such as India and China—than in Western countries, which tend to have a more independent or individualistic culture.

Mittal and his co-authors on both studies—Michael Walsh of West Virginia University and Karen Winterich of Penn State University—found that the higher the consumer’s commitment to the brand, the more negative the consumer’s reaction to any changes in the logo design. A logo change elicited three times more negative thoughts among strongly committed consumers than among consumers with weak commitment to the brand.

The study published in the Journal of Product & Brand Management showed that after a change in the logo, strongly committed consumers held a more negative attitude of the brand than consumers who had low brand commitment.

“It is important for companies to refresh their logos, but the process of doing so must be carefully managed,” Mittal says. “Our research shows that companies need to carefully consult customers—whether through Internet sites or chat rooms—to ensure that customers feel they have been heard in the redesign and repositioning process. That will ensure that highly committed customers—who are also often the heaviest consumers of the brand—feel connected to the brand.”

Though Starbucks seems to have alienated some of its loyal U.S. customers—some have planned protests—the redesign will likely generate more brand loyalty among new customers in countries such as China, India, Taiwan, and Singapore, says Mittal, all of which are strong emerging markets and have consumers who tend to be culturally collectivist and interdependent. Removing the lettering gives the logo a more rounded appearance.

The second study, scheduled for publication in the Journal of Consumer Marketing, compared two groups of customers: In one group they experimentally evoked an interdependent/collectivist mindset and in the other the researchers evoked an individualistic/independent mindset. The study participants were then shown a rounded logo or an angular logo and asked to rate how much they liked the brand on a seven-point scale.

Results showed that changing the logo to be rounded led to a more positive brand attitude among highly committed customers with an interdependent mindset (5.9). In contrast, changing the logo to be rounded was negatively perceived by committed customers with an independent mindset (5.0). Interestingly, in both groups, the weakly committed customers had high brand attitude (5.6 or more).

“Research in aesthetics shows that interdependent cultures prefer rounded shapes as they represent harmony, which is consistent with an interdependent view of the world,” Mittal says. “Those countries tend to have a higher percentage of rounded logos compared with individualistic countries, and logos and product shapes that are rounded are more acceptable and embraced in those cultures.”

More news from Rice University: www.media.rice.edu/media/