Does Childhood Exposure to a Brand Improve Brand Name Recognition?

Abstract

The age-of-acquisition effect suggests that things learned early in life, including brand names, are recognized faster and more accurately. This study confirms this effect but cautions that the managerial impact of age of acquisition is small. Brand exposure frequency and usage recency have a far greater effect on recognition than age of acquisition. The strongest age-of-acquisition effect is observed among individuals who are unfamiliar with the brand, suggesting that repetition, such as in advertising, is necessary. Respondents were slower to identify brands released before they turned 15, indicating that memorybased processes occur for early-learned brands, whereas late-learned brands relied more on processes that were not memory based, such as guessing.