Recent research from the University of Toronto Scarborough Department of Management has demonstrated that the vowel placement in a brand name influences the perception of the product and subsequent decision making.
There are two different types of vowel sounds. “Front vowels” are made when the tongue is forward while “back vowels” are produced when the tongue is in the rear of oral cavity. It has been shown that these vowels are associated with different expectations about the product. For example, front vowels are associated with sharpness and small size while back sounds are more related to ideas of dullness, darkness, and largeness.
Sam Maglio and colleagues have demonstrated that these differences can also influence information processing and lead to behaviour modification by accentuating those product features that the brand intends to promote. They report that when faced with back vowels in a product name, customers tend to favour the product desirability and focus on more primary features rather than secondary aspects. The opposite trend was observed in the case of front vowels. Their results have been published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
