Going to great lengths in the pursuit of luxury : how longer brand names can enhance the luxury perception of a brand
Brand names are a crucial part of the brand equity and marketing strategy of any company. Research suggests that companies spend considerable time and money to create suitable names for their brands and products. This paper uses the Zipf's law (or Principle of Least Effort) to analyze the perce...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/83053 http://hdl.handle.net/10220/50193 |
| _version_ | 1811696887854530560 |
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| author | Pathak, Abhishek Velasco, Carlos Petit, Olivia Calvert, Gemma Anne |
| author2 | Nanyang Business School |
| author_facet | Nanyang Business School Pathak, Abhishek Velasco, Carlos Petit, Olivia Calvert, Gemma Anne |
| author_sort | Pathak, Abhishek |
| collection | NTU |
| description | Brand names are a crucial part of the brand equity and marketing strategy of any company. Research suggests that companies spend considerable time and money to create suitable names for their brands and products. This paper uses the Zipf's law (or Principle of Least Effort) to analyze the perceived luxuriousness of brand names. One of the most robust laws in linguistics, Zipf's law describes the inverse relationship between a word's length and its frequency i.e., the more frequently a word is used in language, the shorter it tends to be. Zipf's law has been applied to many fields of science and in this paper, we provide evidence for the idea that because polysyllabic words (and brand names) are rare in everyday conversation, they are considered as more complex, distant, and abstract and that the use of longer brand names can enhance the perception of how luxurious a brand is (compared with shorter brand names, which are considered to be close, frequent, and concrete to consumers). Our results suggest that shorter names (mono‐syllabic) are better suited to basic brands whereas longer names (tri‐syllabic or more) are more appropriate for luxury brands. |
| first_indexed | 2024-10-01T07:46:31Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | ntu-10356/83053 |
| institution | Nanyang Technological University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-10-01T07:46:31Z |
| publishDate | 2019 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | ntu-10356/830532023-05-19T06:44:43Z Going to great lengths in the pursuit of luxury : how longer brand names can enhance the luxury perception of a brand Pathak, Abhishek Velasco, Carlos Petit, Olivia Calvert, Gemma Anne Nanyang Business School Consumer Behavior Brand Names Business::General Brand names are a crucial part of the brand equity and marketing strategy of any company. Research suggests that companies spend considerable time and money to create suitable names for their brands and products. This paper uses the Zipf's law (or Principle of Least Effort) to analyze the perceived luxuriousness of brand names. One of the most robust laws in linguistics, Zipf's law describes the inverse relationship between a word's length and its frequency i.e., the more frequently a word is used in language, the shorter it tends to be. Zipf's law has been applied to many fields of science and in this paper, we provide evidence for the idea that because polysyllabic words (and brand names) are rare in everyday conversation, they are considered as more complex, distant, and abstract and that the use of longer brand names can enhance the perception of how luxurious a brand is (compared with shorter brand names, which are considered to be close, frequent, and concrete to consumers). Our results suggest that shorter names (mono‐syllabic) are better suited to basic brands whereas longer names (tri‐syllabic or more) are more appropriate for luxury brands. Published version 2019-10-17T05:10:33Z 2019-12-06T15:10:55Z 2019-10-17T05:10:33Z 2019-12-06T15:10:55Z 2019 Journal Article Pathak, A., Velasco, C., Petit, O., & Calvert, G. A. (2019). Going to great lengths in the pursuit of luxury : how longer brand names can enhance the luxury perception of a brand. Psychology & Marketing, 36(10), 951-963. doi:10.1002/mar.21247 0742-6046 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/83053 http://hdl.handle.net/10220/50193 10.1002/mar.21247 en Psychology & Marketing © 2019 The Author(s). Psychology & Marketing. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 13 p. application/pdf |
| spellingShingle | Consumer Behavior Brand Names Business::General Pathak, Abhishek Velasco, Carlos Petit, Olivia Calvert, Gemma Anne Going to great lengths in the pursuit of luxury : how longer brand names can enhance the luxury perception of a brand |
| title | Going to great lengths in the pursuit of luxury : how longer brand names can enhance the luxury perception of a brand |
| title_full | Going to great lengths in the pursuit of luxury : how longer brand names can enhance the luxury perception of a brand |
| title_fullStr | Going to great lengths in the pursuit of luxury : how longer brand names can enhance the luxury perception of a brand |
| title_full_unstemmed | Going to great lengths in the pursuit of luxury : how longer brand names can enhance the luxury perception of a brand |
| title_short | Going to great lengths in the pursuit of luxury : how longer brand names can enhance the luxury perception of a brand |
| title_sort | going to great lengths in the pursuit of luxury how longer brand names can enhance the luxury perception of a brand |
| topic | Consumer Behavior Brand Names Business::General |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/83053 http://hdl.handle.net/10220/50193 |
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