Going to great lengths in the pursuit of luxury: how longer brand names can enhance the luxury perception of a brand

Abhishek Pathak, Carlos Velasco, Olivia Petit, Gemma A. Calvert

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    22 Citations (Scopus)
    207 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    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.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)951-963
    Number of pages13
    JournalPsychology and Marketing
    Volume36
    Issue number10
    Early online date22 Jul 2019
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Oct 2019

    Keywords

    • Zipf's law
    • brand names
    • consumer behavior
    • length
    • luxury marketing
    • perception
    • sound symbolism

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Applied Psychology
    • Marketing

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