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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the predicting roles of extension naming strategies and categorical fit on the transfer of brand personality from a parent brand to its extension brand. Extension naming strategies include direct and indirect naming, while categorical fit is the similarity between an extended product and its parent brand's cognitive category. Further, the interaction effect and the relative effectiveness of various combinations of the two predictors when determining brand personality transfer are also explored.

A 2×2 factorial between‐subject experimental design with one covariate is used to test the proposed hypotheses. The experiment involves 242 participants from a university in Taiwan.

The findings show that consumers perceive higher brand personality transfer when a direct naming strategy is applied or when the parent brand extends to a high perceived fit product. The former is the dominant predictor of brand personality transfer. There also exists an interaction effect between extension naming strategies and categorical fit. Specifically, consumers perceive the highest brand personality transfer when a direct naming strategy is applied for a high fit extended product. Moreover, the use of a direct naming strategy for an extended product with a low categorical fit still leads to a higher degree of parent brand personality than both the other cases in which an indirect naming strategy is applied for either high or low fit extended products. Furthermore, irrespective of the degree of categorical fit, the transfer of brand personality is low when an indirect naming strategy is applied.

The current research is pioneer work in identifying the determinants of brand personality transfer. It also notes the interaction effect and the relative effectiveness of the determinants.

This research finds out to what extent companies’ names are influenced by the place’s attributes versus the official branding policies of a place and, consequently, whether and how local companies “buy into” the place’s strategies put forth by official bodies.

This paper is both conceptual and empirical, as a mixed quantitative and interpretive approach is used. The companies’ names of a tourist industry (the tour and guiding companies) in three destinations are compared and pitched against the branding of these cities. The companies' names are classified into categories to ascertain whether they reflect (or diverge from) the official strategies. Finally, a conceptual model is developed to explain the findings: the strategic naming model (SNM).

Our main finding is that the overall business features of a place being stronger determinants to the naming strategies than tourist destination branding initiatives. The intrinsic features of a place seem thus to be “above” destination branding policies. The researched features account for different naming strategies, such as highly original names, flat names or non-strategic names.

As the work is based on a convenience sample, it cannot claim strong representativity. The fact that each of the three data sets was processed by a different researcher might bring up personal biases.

This work is a call for a more intensive use of naming strategies to the companies’ advantages, as naming is found out to be strategy used to a very low degree. Thanks to this research, companies will understand the different naming possibilities and be able to apply them to their strategies by choosing names which express “uniqueness” or “belonging”. Practitioners will also be aware of whether they are communicating towards the industry or towards the market.

No works were found that empirically pursue our research goals. Therefore, this research might be considered as a novelty. The proposed SNM model explains and relates the most usual company naming techniques, which were unrelated up to date.

The evolution of private labels (PL) is a recent trend in the retail industry: many retailers now manage a PL portfolio that includes multiple value propositions, as well as various brand name strategies. Little research has been done, however, on how this combination of PL strategies conditions the results of the retailer that manages them. This study aims to examine the formation of PL brand equity and its effect on store loyalty for retailers with differently tiered PL programs (a “better” program with standard PL vs a full PL quality spectrum with economy, standard and premium PLs) and different PL naming strategies (store-banner name or stand-alone brand name).

A survey (N = 644) was used to test the model in the context of the consumer goods retail industry. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and multi-group structural equation modelling techniques were used to assess the proposed model.

The results show differences in the formation of PL loyalty based on whether the retailer has a tiered PL program. In portfolios with economy, standard and premium PLs, PL associations have a stronger effect than PL awareness in the formation of PL loyalty. Portfolios with a standard PL show balanced effects of PL associations and PL awareness on PL loyalty formation. As to the positive effect of PL brand equity on store loyalty, this study also shows a stronger effect of PL brand equity on store loyalty in chains that choose to use their store banner name in their PLs.

Retailers that manage multi-tier PL portfolios (as opposed to those that commercialise a standard PL) can increase loyalty to the PL portfolio significantly by constructing highly differentiated images of their economy, standard and premium PLs to ensure that consumers truly perceive the different value propositions of their PL tiers. As to PL naming strategy, the authors recommend that retailers that use the same retail chain name for one or several of their PLs invest in their corporate reputation to strengthen the brand equity achieved by their PLs and thus increase loyalty to the retail chain. Retailers must perform specific communication and advertising campaigns for PLs with the stand-alone brand name.

Today, any reference to PLs as a whole is overly simplistic, but no research has assessed empirically differences in the influences of a multi-tiered vs a standard PL program on the PL loyalty formation for PL portfolios. Nor has any empirical research incorporated the influence of PL naming strategy on store loyalty. This study fills these gaps, integrating into the same model two significant moderating variables of retailers’ strategy: their PL tier strategy and their PL naming strategy.

Although the concept of branding has been considered extensively in products and services, branding in Chinese is a relatively emerging phenomenon. This paper aims to present the enlivenment of branding in Chinese within the cross‐strait markets of Taiwan and Mainland China, which underlies various ideologies.

This study primarily reviews literatures of brand and brand name translation, defines the essentiality of brand naming, and outlines the branding strategies for entering cross‐strait markets. Furthermore, this study validates the using of substantially interpreted brands that support the authors' four developed propositions.

This study compares substantially interpreted brands in cross‐strait markets with a reference to commonly used translation methods. The results illustrate interesting ideologies among cross‐strait markets and can help managers achieve global brand recognition.

Since China and Taiwan share the same Chinese culture, the qualitative method proposed by the present authors is more applicable to practitioners who are eager to pursue branding in cross‐strait markets. Thus, the relevant techniques may not be applicable to people less familiar with Chinese culture.

The qualitative case study provides an advisable method for branding in Chinese. The results of this study can provide greater understanding of the various ideologies in cross‐strait markets, as well as help managers achieve global brand recognition.

The various ideologies from branding is complex, especially for those involved with linguistic essentials. Previous research has mainly focused on managerial‐based branding and customer‐based branding. This paper extends the interest into enlivening inspirations.

Increased competition in the consumer goods marketplace has resulted in too many brands chasing too few consumers. In an attempt to ease pressure on margins, and both brand and product range profitability, marketers would be well advised to reinspect their policies towards brand naming and the attendant costs associated with those policies. Is it really necessary for each new product to be individually named? If it is, then what are the strategic and financial implications of this decision? Why is it that the practice in some companies is to resort to a string of unrelated brand names whereas the practice elsewhere is to use an umbrella family name, with or without, a brand name as a suffix? The answers to such questions are by no means obvious and closer inspection of the issues relating to naming policy fails to yield any consensus let alone a definitive approach. This article seeks to depict the alternative naming strategies engaged by marketers and to focus on those considerations that would favour a family name in preference to an individualised brand name. The article concludes with recommendations that are drawn from current literature and the experience of marketers with a view to determining those circumstances that may influence the formulation of a more appropriate naming policy.

Product color names related to a consumption setting are commonly used in advertising to persuade. This study aims to use consumption imagery fluency as an underlying mechanism for assessing how such a naming tactic impacts product evaluation.

Three between-subjects experiments examine how product evaluation, in response to the use of color names containing consumption situation information, varies as a function of their accessibility (Study 1), and also test the role of a naming explanation (Study 2). How readily a consumer takes in consumption imagery is evaluated as a mediator. The studies further check if color attribute serves as a moderator of such color naming effect and that the naming factor contributes to consumption imagery fluency directly or indirectly alters such through their impact on comprehension fluency (Study 3).

Marketing products with color names related to the consumption setting is more effective than using generic names. Consumption imagery fluency mediates the results. This positive outcome is reduced when color names are less accessible. Fortunately, including an explanation to facilitate reasoning for product color names is helpful to reverse this disadvantage. The same patterns are not evident for highly accessible names. In addition, the effectiveness of consumption situation-related color names is restricted to the circumstance of color attribute as secondary, as opposed to primary. Furthermore, naming factors influence the ease of consumption of imagery whether or not facilitated by comprehension fluency.

This research provides evidence of consumers’ responses to product color naming that involves consumption situations and identifies consumption imagery fluency as a potential means for mediating the studied effect.

Naming a product color in consumption situation-related terms triggers consumption imagery, driving evaluation when color is the secondary attribute of a product.

This research contributes to understanding the influence of naming a product’s color in promotional communication and correlates to productive tactics for advertising messages.

The purpose of this paper is to present different naming, packaging, and pricing strategies adopted by private label (PL) retailers in India. This study also aims to identify preferred private label brand (PLB) categories, factors influencing their selection, and the importance of cues in evaluation of PLBs. The overall purpose is to identify important areas for future research of PLBs in the wake of organized retail growth in an emerging economy (India is the context here).

This study is based on in-store observations of major Indian retail chains, longitudinal analyses of customers’ shopping bills, qualitative analyses of consumer interviews, and focus group discussions.

The results indicate that retailers primarily adopt “Sub-branding” (using the store name along with a separate brand name) and “House of Brands” (using a separate brand name only) strategies to sell PLBs in the Indian market. Groceries, food and beverages, and apparel are the preferred categories in PLB. Price, quality, and convenience are the major factors influencing PLB. Taste, ingredients, packaging, price, brand name, and store name are the main factors that are used to evaluate PLBs.

Due to the qualitative analyses and interpretation, there are limitations to this study which need to be empirically validated.

This research has implications for organized retailers in understanding the various strategies used for PLBs in India.

This study is a novel study for documenting the PLB strategies adopted by organized retailers in India. It also uses a longitudinal exploratory approach to further understanding the consumption of PLBs in India.

Prior research emphasises that organisational founders have a good deal of influence in organisational development and, where information and communication technogies (ICTs) are involved, a generic strategy is usually deployed by managers in order to deal with any resistance that might occur. Cognisant of this, the authors investigated the role played by a managing director of a small to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) consultancy in an ICT project associated with organisational development.

This study is based on an ethnography of an ICT related change management initiative which, theoretically, takes into account though from the social shaping of technology – specifically the idea that technologies in their broadest sense are subject to ongoing work beyond the design stage.

The authors argue that Markus' interaction theory of resistance still has relevance today and we extend it by emphasising the problem of homogenising users and downplaying their ability to appropriate resistance strategies in situ.

The study is based upon one group of individuals' experiences. Further case studies of resistance success are required which further highlight how this is achieved and why.

Those engaged with organisational development projects need to be better educated as to the reasons for resistance, particularly positive ones, and the methods by which this might take place.

This study conceptualises strategies for “overcoming” resistance as managerial technologies. Conceptualising them in this way shows the deployment of such technologies to be a complicated and active process where the audience for such things are involved in how they are received and appropriated to suit differing agendas.

The purpose of this study is to examine how status‐seeking and fashion‐innovative young consumers evaluate diffusion brands. The influence of brand naming techniques and country of origin on brand image and product quality of diffusion brands is also examined.

Two well‐known luxury brands and two product categories were identified as the stimulus for the study through pretests. Data were collected using a convenience sampling method in a large Australian university. A self‐administered questionnaire was distributed and 603 usable responses were returned with the sample falling between the ages of 18‐24.

The results revealed that sub‐brands and nested brands have similar product quality and brand image evaluation when compared with the parent brand. Furthermore, sub‐brands and nested brands have demonstrated product quality fit and brand image fit with the parent brand. The findings suggest that a new brand is not a good substitute for the parent brand to express status. In addition, brand origin is a greater indication of product or brand quality than country of origin.

Replication of study on other segments is worthy of future research. Only the influence of fashion innovativeness and status consumption on diffusion brands was examined. Other external factors can be identified and explored.

Marketers or brand strategists can consider establishing sub‐brands or a nested brand in the early stages of product innovation as status symbols to attract young consumers. There should also be greater emphasis on brand name instead of product involvement when marketing a diffusion brand.

There is limited research that examines how young status‐seeking and fashion‐innovative consumers evaluate diffusion brands. Furthermore, the study is conducted in an Australian context. Two product categories were also studied.

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.