Does the cowl make the monk? Detecting counterfeits in brand names versus logos

Companies and products are identified by their brand names, which are typically written with a specific letter style, color, and design (i.e., logos). This graphical information offers a distinctive image that facilitates their recognition. However, the uniqueness of these configuration cues may make brand names more vulnerable to counterfeiting via misspelling. We examined whether the confusability at detecting misspelled brand names is higher when embedded in the full logo than when presented in plain format (Experiment 1), when removing all graphical information of the logo other than typeface (Experiment 2), and when only modifying the typeface (Experiment 3). Participants had to decide whether the presented item was a correctly spelled brand name. The misspelled stimuli were created by either transposing or replacing two internal letters of popular brand names (amazon → amzaon vs. amceon), thus allowing us to have a measure of the transposed-letter confusability effect. Results showed a sizeable transposed-letter confusability effect for all types of brand names, but the effect was greatest for the misspelled full logos. Thus, the distinctiveness of the graphical information in logos has a deleterious side effect: logos are quite vulnerable to counterfeiting via misspelling branding.