Brand and marketing communications research group

Head of research group: Dr. László Kovács

In December 2018, the Research Group for Branding and Marketing Communications was established at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Eötvös Loránd University to promote research on the processes, tools and effectiveness of marketing and brand communication. The group carries out basic and applied research, both in-house and externally funded through grants. Research is carried out involving the members of the research group, associated researchers and students (e.g. thesis topic). In addition to the dissemination of scientific results, the research group aims also at science communication.

Research topics

- Green marketing and green business

Research on green marketing issues and green business solutions is increasing worldwide. We seek to analyze the challenges of a green, sustainable and circular businesses and business activities: we scrutinize aspects of consumer behavior consumer expectations and all sides of green marketing, from the product/service to the communication of green issues.

- Brand name research

Interdisciplinary research on brand names, balancing on the boundaries between applied linguistics and marketing science. It examines the brand name inventory of a given period, branding opportunities and trends, product category-specific characteristics of brand names, brand nomenclature and spelling, and the possibilities for brand adaptation and translation depending on the target market.

- Brand associations and cognitive brand positioning

Research on cognitive brand positioning aims to investigate the association structures of brand names in two ways: firstly, by looking at what associations brand names evoke and secondly, by looking at which words evoke brand names as associations.

The aim of the research is to analyse the position of brand names in the mental lexicon - the "brain dictionary" - and their associative relationships, to identify product category and brand-specific association structures, and to use the results to suggest ways of strengthening the position of a brand, creating strong brands, and optimising marketing communication activities for specific product groups and brands.

Research objectives

• Creating a brand association database
• Multispectral analysis of brand association structures
• Longitudinal analysis of brand associations in Hungarian using currently available databases
• To identify the ways and possibilities of influencing brand associations
• Examination of brand name types in selected product categories
• Analysis of brand and marketing communication activities for selected product categories
• Consumer behaviour studies