1 A Study of Logo Form, Tone and Attribute Preferences ... - ANZMAC

Variant (PMS Purple
(P) & PMS Green (G))
Table 3 Logo tone variant preferences (% n)
Total
(n=222)
Staff
(n=53)
Client
(n=41)
Local
Business
Owner
(n=18)
Local
staff
(n=28)
Other
staff
(n=49)
Other
(n=34)
1 (P269 & G577) 79.7 80.8 70.7 83.3 82.1 85.7 76.5
2 (P271 & G577) 18.0 19.2 24.4 16.7 17.9 10.2 20.6
3 (P265 & G577) 2.3 0.0 4.9 0.0 0.0 4.1 2.9
Discussion and Implications
This paper aimed to determine the practicability of involving stakeholder groups in logo
development by considering the congruency of stakeholder group perspectives for an SEA.
Improving the consistency of positive messages about the SEA across stakeholder groups
might contribute positively to the job that SEAs do. Improving SEA’s ability to source jobs
for PWDs could reduce the financial burden on governments offering disability support
benefits (McVicar 2006, p. 523). As corporate logos are an important tool to transfer the
corporate objective and image to internal and external stakeholders (Van Riel & Van den Ban,
2001), congruency of stakeholder perceptions is important. The key finding of the research is
that stakeholder’s preference for logo form and tone are consistent across stakeholder groups
despite local business owner’s perceptions of some logo attributes appearing more rational
than other stakeholder groups.
Local Business Owners rated the logo tells me about the organisation and the logo is
professional more highly than other stakeholders. These results suggest that business owners
have a separate value system from other stakeholders (e.g., clients and staff) for interpretation
of logo attributes; placing greater importance on functional characteristics of the organisation
than internal staff and consumer who placing greater importance on emotional characteristics
of the organisation. As both emotional and functional characteristics of a brand are important
for durability (Roper & Davies, 2007) the different perspectives of stakeholders groups are
important for logo form development.
Various colour tones were included in this study. All stakeholders preferred the strongest tone
of the color; an idea consistent with color theory’s suggestion that strong use of color is useful
when someone wants to sell something to another (Fraser & Banks, 2004, p. 12). These
results suggest a consultative approach to logo development is essential for organisations
dealing with multiple stakeholders in order to connect all the stakeholder groups similarly
with the organisational vision. This paper is a first step in understanding the value of
considering stakeholders perspectives for logo development to corporate image consistency.
The small number of business owners participating in the study limits the genralisability from
our findings. Further research should seek to quantify boundary conditions through
replication across similar not-for-profit agencies, which by definition serve a complex range
of stakeholders. Further research could also investigate the efficacy of consultative logo
design with respect of communicating ‘what the organization does’ across stakeholder
groups.
This paper reports logo preference using predetermined attributes which limits respondent
options and quantifies the communicative value of the logo design rather than finding the
actual view of the different stakeholders for the corporate logo and effects on business
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