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Previous research is mixed regarding consumer reactions and concerns regarding product brands with foreign‐sounding names. This paper aims to study the perception and purchase intent of foreign‐name brands in a sample of adult US and Chinese consumers.

US and Chinese consumers completed a 23‐item bilingual questionnaire to assess perceptions of foreign names on brand attitude and purchase intent for low‐involvement products, using two fictitious soft drink products.

The paper finds that there were no differences between US and Chinese consumers in attitudes towards foreign products or foreign brand names, except in the case of perceived deception. There were differences in perceptions that the product name was not authentic to the country of origin. Differences in purchase intent were driven by product type and price rather than country of origin or brand name.

When there is incongruence between product type and perceived country of origin, favorability for the product diminishes. Price, taste and packaging design may be more important in determining purchase intent.

While previous research looked at foreign brand names for high‐involvement products, this study addresses a low‐involvement product with mass‐market potential. China's and the USA's role as major consumers for global brands makes this study all the more relevant.

Both foreign and local companies frequently name their brands in foreign language on the market of developing countries, and some of them choose to disclose the brands' country of origin to consumers. The purpose of this research is to investigate the joint effects between the practices of disclosing the actual country of origin of the brands and the language of the brand names on consumers' purchase intention for foreign brands and local brands in developing countries.

The proposed hypotheses were tested in two studies, namely an experiment and a field experimental survey, with stimuli from two product categories.

The results of the two empirical studies with Chinese participants consistently demonstrate that revealing the actual country of origin of the brands undermines consumers' purchase intention for local brands that use foreign brand names, but does not impact consumers' purchase intention for foreign brands that use local brand names.

This research first investigates the effects of adapting the brand names into local language of developing countries for brands from developed countries on consumers' purchase intention, which provides new insight into the literature on foreign branding and country of origin effects as well as practical implications for brand managers.

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.

By outlining the evolution of brand management research over the past 25 years, as reported in the Journal of Product and Brand Management (JPBM), this paper aims to analyze the changes in the way branding has been approached in research, highlight the current challenges the discipline faces and suggest future research avenues that will hopefully further enrich brand management knowledge.

This paper includes internal historical literature review and commentary.

After a thorough analysis of the journal’s content, the contribution that the JPBM has made in the development of brand management knowledge over the past 25 years is highlighted. Eight major shifts in brand management research and thought, and three overarching difficulties and challenges, are identified.

By solely focusing on the contributions published in the journal, by no means this review is exhaustive and includes all the contributions to the discipline. Its contribution is limited to the analysis of the work, and the evolution of brand management thinking, recorded in the JPBM.

The paper highlights the evolution of brand management thought and presents imperatives and challenges to guide future research in brand management.

The purpose of this paper is to comment on Magnusson et al.'s paper. Rather than entering into the COO (country of origin) relevance debate, the author observes the shift from manufacturing to brand origin and outline consequences for future COO research by taking into account linguistic aspects of brand names.

This paper documents the issue of brand origin recognition accuracy (BORA, a central theme in Magnusson et al.'s paper) and the progressive replacement of COO and COM (country of manufacture) by COB (country of brand). Linguistic cues lead to both incorrect and correct classification of brands in terms of their national origin, which the author subsumes in four ideal‐typical situations, by taking into account company intention to manipulate origin information or not. The author then outlines factors which cause and moderate incorrect versus correct classification, especially brand size, corporate vs product names, and linguistic devices.

A framework is developed crossing causes of incorrect versus correct classification with company strategic branding intents. Suggestions are provided for future research combining linguistic and non‐linguistic aspects of BORA.

Companies willing to build on the origin and favorability of their brand names should deploy a deliberate naming strategy that is expressed in the textual part, as well as in the visual part (i.e. brand name fonts, logo, packaging) and the accompanying marketing communications, especially advertising copy.

This paper takes distance from the raging debate on the relevance of COO research, and suggests to deepen the understanding of BORA. This is done by looking at causes and moderating variables of BORA, and taking into account linguistic aspects of strategic branding in the global market.

One of the things I find most stimulating about customers is how readily they take things for granted. Overnight, today’s innovation becomes tomorrow’s routine ‐ something to be expected. This fact of human behavior is by far the best encouragement I know to pursue a strategy of continuous improvement in service to customers. For example, until recently it was rare for people serving you in a big shop to use your name. Now it is the failure to use your name that is more likely to be noticed. Using the customer’s name when he or she offers a credit or banker’s card has become part of the “given”. The service provider gets no competitive advantage in return for the effort involved.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The word brand is almost a sacred one in the eyes of many people in the marketing world. But consumers see things rather differently.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

This paper explores which market and product category characteristics could influence the use of foreign language brand names (i.e. whether a brand uses a foreign language versus local language brand name) in some of the largest Latin American countries.

Hypotheses are tested using 880 brands from 39 product categories and nine Latin American markets using a hierarchical logistic regression.

Results revealed that foreign language brand names are more likely to be used in product categories related to local infrastructure, high-tech and global community. In contrast, local language brand names are more likely to be used in product categories associated to subscriptions. Findings also suggest that Hofstede's national cultural dimensions are significant factors. Finally, the results revealed that foreign language brand names are more likely to be used in markets with a low level of foreign language proficiency.

This paper shows the importance of considering market and product category characteristics and their potential influence on local versus foreign language branding in Latin America – an ignored issue in previous research.

The purpose of this paper was to conduct an experimental design of Americans’ preferences for the English version of Chinese brand names by drawing from prior research in psychology, linguistics and marketing. The impact of string length and semantic relevance to English on meaningfulness, memorability and likeability of brand names from Chinese companies was assessed.

A 2 × 2 experimental design was used, whereby brand names are categorized by string length (short vs long) and semantic relevance to English (with vs without). Respondents’ perception of the Chinese language in terms of pronounceability, language familiarity and language attitude is used as covariate.

Results reveal shorter brand names, and those with semantic relevance to English are perceived as more memorable. It was also found that pronounceability of the brand name does influence brand name preference in terms of their meaningfulness, memorability and likeability.

This exploratory paper is limited to Americans’ perceptions of the English version of Chinese automobile brand names.

Chinese companies should therefore carefully consider the brand name characteristics in terms of string length and semantic relevance, as well as their ease of pronunciation when choosing and introducing their brand name in the USA.

This is the first paper which assesses Western consumers’ perception of brand names from Chinese automobile companies in terms of their brand meaningfulness, brand memorability and brand likeability.