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.

公司和产品通过其品牌名称进行标识，这些品牌名称通常以特定的字母样式，颜色和设计（即徽标）书写。该图形信息提供了有助于其识别的独特图像。但是，这些配置提示的唯一性可能会使品牌名称更容易因拼写错误而造假。我们检查了嵌入完整徽标中时发现拼写错误的商标名称时的混淆性是否比以纯格式显示时（实验1），删除字体以外的徽标的所有图形信息时（实验2）以及仅修改徽标时的混淆性更高。字体（实验3）。参加者必须确定所展示的商品是否是正确拼写的品牌名称。拼写错误的刺激是通过转置或替换两个流行品牌名称的内部字母（am​​azon→amzaon与amceon）而创建的，因此使我们能够衡量转置字母的混淆性效果。结果显示，所有类型的商标都具有相当大的转置字母混淆性效果，但是对于拼写错误的完整徽标而言，效果最大。因此，徽标中图形信息的独特性具有有害的副作用：徽标很容易因拼写错误的商标而造假。