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The deference towards brands that motivated yesterday’s consumers to purchase is no longer so evident in today’s shopping environment. As consumers become more sophisticated in their assessment of brands and more demanding in their requirements, brand management will need to develop more substantive market models to regain the initiative. Outlines an empirical model of brand loyalty that provides diagnostic data to support the management of brand loyal behaviour and customer equity in grocery markets.

We examined consumer reactions to new products introduced under four different brand naming scenarios. The results suggest that when consumers see a high degree of fit between the new product and the existing brand, brand extensions, sub‐brands, and nested brands are about equally preferred. But when consumers perceive little fit, a new brand name is the most preferred, followed by nested brands, sub‐brands, and extensions, in that order.

Although research associated with branding′s influence on consumer behavior has increased in recent years, the vast majority of this work has focussed on tangible goods rather than intangible services. Focusses on branding and brand name strategies for intangible services. Develops a classification system for service brand names and describes a study which explores the degree to which these diverse strategies are used by different types of services.

The key benefits resulting from the development of effective brand names by firms operating in fiercely competitive food markets are outlined and the paucity of relevant research is noted. This article provides a managerially applicable model of brand name development and presents findings on this subject recently gathered in a survey of food manufacturers.

The name is at the core of a brand's personality, symbolising the sum of the attributes that make up the brand and quickly become synonymous with the satisfactions that the brand delivers. In view of this, it seems ironic that the name is frequently the one element of the brand which, prior to launch, attracts the least expenditure and often the most superficial research. Whether this is due to ignorance or indifference is not known. Very little good brand name research is done, not for lack of technique, more for lack of a true appreciation of the role that the brand name plays. The function of the brand name and how to conduct brand name research are described.

Brands are important and valuable assets which are frequently underacknowledged and misunderstood. The processes of new‐brand development and of brand management are similarly mysterious. This is not to say that certain important components of the branding process — for example, design, market research, advertising — are inadequately developed or unprofessional. Rather, that integrating these particular areas of expertise into a systematic and coherent approach to branding frequently relies mainly on intuition. Furthermore, certain key parts of the branding process — for instance, brand‐name development — have generally in the past been tackled haphazardly and, at times, illogically. The author's view of what branding is all about is presented and the role of one vital component in a brand's personality — the brand name or trademark — is discussed.

Managers prefer semantic imbeds in brand names, but extant literature has primarily studied fictitious names for their sound-symbolic perceptions. This paper aims to explore sound-symbolic perceptions of products with blended brand names (BBNs), formed with at least one semantic and one nonsemantic component. Unlike most extant literature, this study not only estimates the effect of vowels and consonants individually on product perceptions but also of their combinations. The boundary condition for this effect is examined by classifying products by their categorization and attributes by their abstractness.

Through a within-subject experiment, this paper tested perceptions of products with BBNs having high-/low-frequency sounds. A mixed-design experiment followed with sound frequency, product-level categorization and attributes’ abstractness as predictor variables.

For BBNs, vowel sounds convey brand meaning better than the combinations of vowel and consonant sounds – and these convey brand meaning better than consonant sounds. Differences in consumers’ perceptions of products with BBNs occur when the degree of attributes’ abstractness matches product-level categorization, such as when concrete attributes match subordinate-level categorization.

Brand managers/strategists can communicate product positioning (attribute-based) through BBNs created specifically for product categories and product types.

This research presents a comparative analysis across vowels, consonants and their combinations on consumers’ perceptions of products with BBNs. Manipulation of names’ length and position of the sound-symbolic imbed in the BBN proffered additional contributions. Another novelty is the interaction effect of product categorization levels and attributes’ abstractness on sound-symbolic perception.

Consumers often use various cues such as health stars and nutrition claims on product packaging to draw inferences regarding healthfulness. However, much less is known regarding the role of brand names in consumer decisions around healthfulness. The purpose of this study is to introduce angelic branding as a brand naming strategy that may act as a supernatural agent benevolence (i.e. loving, kind and merciful) prime that leads consumers to perceive that the brand’s products are healthful.

Study 1 examines the effect of angelic brand names on brand healthfulness perceptions. Study 2 investigates the mediating role of brand virtuousness perceptions on the relationship between angelic branding and brand healthfulness perceptions and the downstream consequences on purchase intention. Study 3 explores the moderating role of authoritarian supernatural agent belief (i.e. angry, vindictive and punishing) on the relationship between angelic branding and brand virtuousness perceptions, and subsequent brand healthfulness perceptions and purchase intention.

The results of this study demonstrate that angelic branding results in healthfulness perceptions for a healthy product (i.e. vitamins; Study 1a), an unhealthy product (i.e. cookies; Study 1b; eliminating perceptual fluency as a potential alternative explanation for the phenomenon) and across different product categories (i.e. surface spray; Study 1c). The results from Study 2 find that angelic brand names prime brand healthfulness perceptions because of the activation of brand virtuousness perceptions (not brand quality perceptions; eliminating a general halo effect as a potential alternative explanation for the phenomenon). The results of Study 3 show that strong belief in authoritarian supernatural agents attenuates the angelic brand name–brand healthfulness priming effect.

This research is limited, as it only considers angelic brand naming and not any other benevolence cues in brand logos, such as halos and angel wings. This research is also limited in that it only considers healthfulness perceptions drawn from English angelic brand name cues and from participants within the USA and the UK.

This study has important implications for brand managers in the development of new brand names. Angelic brand naming is suggested as a strategy for brand managers to prime perceptions of brand virtuousness and brand healthfulness and to influence consumer behavior. However, brand managers are cautioned against the use of this brand naming strategy if it is intended to mislead or deceive consumers, resulting in detrimental effects on their health.

This research makes a unique and novel contribution to the literature in brand names on consumer decision-making. Angelic branding is introduced as a brand naming strategy that can act as a supernatural agent religious prime to influence perceptions of brand virtuousness, brand healthfulness and consumer behavioral intentions (i.e. purchase intention).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relative effectiveness of the second-person pronoun perspective within a brand name (as in “You”Tube) and the first-person pronoun perspective (as in “i”Phone).

Drawing on prior research on self-concept, general pronoun usage and the fit between branding tactics and positioning, it is predicted that “you” will garner more favorable consumer responses when the brand is positioned on social benefits, while “I” will garner more favorable responses when the brand is positioned on personal benefits. These predictions are tested in two experiments with US consumers.

When the brand in the experiment was positioned for its social benefits, “you” elicited more favorable brand attitudes than “I”, while the opposite was true when the brand was positioned for its personal benefits. This effect tends to be stronger among those with higher self-esteem.

Managers can make more informed pronoun brand name selections based on their brand’s intended positioning – if it is social, “you” should be used; if it is personal, “I” should be used.

The influence of pronouns in brand names is still largely unexplored. This research is the first to examine “you” brand names and also sheds light on how another marketing variable – positioning – impacts consumer preference for pronoun brand names. Finally, this work shows that such effects are more pronounced for those with higher self-esteem.

This study aims to investigate how brand name (home-emerging-country vs foreign-developed-country brand name) applied by emerging market company in conjunction with revealing the actual country-of-brand-origin (COBO) (revealed vs non-revealed origin from developed vs emerging country) affects purchase intensions of durable goods.

An experimental conjoint analysis and multilevel linear models were applied.

Results demonstrate that brand name differentiates consumers’ purchase intentions. However, not every foreign-developed-country brand name may lead to the increase of purchase intentions. Revealing the actual emerging market’s COBO for brands with developed-country brand name may lead to lowering purchase intentions. Moreover, consumer ethnocentrism and materialism moderate the relationship between the brand type in terms of brand name and purchase intentions.

This study contributes to the international marketing literature by simultaneous examination of the impact of brand name type and revealing actual COBO on purchase intentions and the moderating effects of ethnocentrism and materialism, in emerging markets’ context. It also offers novel insights for brand managers regarding the influence of emerging markets’ companies branding strategies on consumer purchase intentions.