The study was carried out to know how customer’s emotional response is related with the applied visual identity level of corporation brand, especially through DM (Direct Mail) which is a media contacts a customer in person. In this study, the ‘cor...
The study was carried out to know how customer’s emotional response is related with the applied visual identity level of corporation brand, especially through DM (Direct Mail) which is a media contacts a customer in person. In this study, the ‘corporation-centered design’ defines a design which maximizes the brand’s visual identity, and the ‘customer-centered design’ defines a design which minimizes the brand’s visual identity. Also, this study considered that the response of customer would be changed by 3 conditions: brand awareness, the service point of DM, and customer’s brand loyalty. Thus this research used 3 standards for classifications; first, ‘corporation-centered design’ and ‘customer-centered design’ were classified into DM for ‘intimacy use’ and DM for ‘product use’ according to the purpose of DM. Second, they were divided to high and low according to levels of brand awareness. Third, there were two groups of customer which have loyalty and have not. DM for ‘intimacy use’ designed as Thank-you letters for purchasing, and DM for ‘product use’ designed as covers of insurance policy document. The brand selection with awareness followed the research of the 10th Korea Management Association Consultants’ Brand Power (K-BPI)(2008), and pre-research verified it. ‘Corporation-centered design’ and ‘customer-centered design’ were represented and verified by reveiwing literature and pre-research. Main research advanced with these four verified designs; it has 9 adjectives items for measuring the emotional response. Those 9 items were closely correlated with emotional response, which were necessary for promotion of customer relationship, and consist of emotional response section; they were chosen among 38 scales based on ‘The Study of Korean Brand Personality Scale Development and Validation’ by Yang Yoon, Cho Eun-Ha (2002). There were another section for finding the response of brand loyalty, and section for general information such as gender and age. In the case of thank-you letter for purchasing in ‘intimacy use’, 4 adjectives were significant in ‘corporation-centered design’ and high brand awareness: ‘friendly’, ‘reliable’, ‘conservative’, ‘formal’. ‘Customer-centered design’ tended to show these 5 significant adjectives: ‘progressive’, ‘sophisticated’, ‘confident’, ‘interesting’, ‘impudent’. In low brand awareness, ‘corporation-centered design’ showed responses of ‘reliable’, ‘conservative’, ‘progressive’, ‘sophisticated’, ‘confident’, ‘impudent’, ‘formal’, and ‘customer-centered design’ showed the result of ‘friendly’, ‘interesting’. For asking feeling 'consideration', in high and low both showed positive response. In the case of cover design of insurance policy documents in ‘product use’, 5 adjectives were significant in ‘corporation-centered design’, high brand awareness: ‘reliable’, ‘conservative’, ‘confident’, ‘impudent’, ‘formal’. And in ‘customer-centered design’, 4 adjectives, ‘friendly’, ‘progressive’, ‘sophisticated’, ‘interesting’, were significant. In low brand awareness, ‘corporation-centered design’ showed responses of ‘reliable’, ‘conservative’, ‘confident’, ‘formal’, and ‘customer-centered design’ showed the responses of ‘progressive’ and ‘interesting’. Also in the question which is directly related with improvement of customer relationship, ‘corporation-centered design’ in high brand awareness comparatively caused of feeling of ‘consideration’. In low brand awareness, the difference of emotional response of ‘customer-centered design’ and ‘corporation-centered design’ did not show statistically significant result. In the aspects of the brand loyalty of customer, the group who has loyalty answered ‘friendly’, ‘reliable’, ‘progressive’, ‘sophisticated’, ‘confident’ to DM for ‘intimacy use’ in ‘corporation-centered design’, and the brand loyalty was insignificant in ‘customer-centered design’. DM for ‘product use’, ‘corporation-centered design’ caused more emotional responses, such as ‘friendly’, ‘progressive’, ‘sophisticated’, ‘confident’, ‘interesting’ than the others. Emotional responses, such as ‘Reliable’, ‘conservative’, ‘confident’ were significant in ‘customer-centered design’. This is an empirical study to know how visual identity of brand influences on customer’s emotional response. The results of this study suggest corporation and brand need to represent their visual identity in different degrees according to brand awareness, the offering purpose of the media, and the brand loyalty when they plan and make DM. These results could be practically applied for promoting customer relationship in actual corporation site.