Summary
As one of the smallest, but most powerful pieces of messaging real estate, a brand name is a valuable strategic investment. A good brand name can differentiate your company, product or service; engage your target audience in a unique and special way; set positive expectations now and in the future about who you are, what you do and what you have to offer. A successful brand name will also continue to release relevant meaning over time. Using examples of brands who got it right, such as Virgin and Apple, and those who got it wrong, such as Mitsubishi, this article offers eight strategic best practices that a marketer should follow in order to increase the likelihood of success when creating a new brand name.

Summary
This paper provides an overview of the mass merchandising industry, primarily in the United States. The paper gives a snapshot summary of the emerging industry in the US, with additional sections on its development, organisation and structure, current conditions and leading companies. It concludes with a brief section about the industry in other countries ('America and the world') as well as a list of further information sources and reading.

Summary
This article investigates best practice for naming a product and what works best in advertising it. He argues that, while almost any name can come to mean almost anything over time, the most important function of a brand name is to differentiate that brand from its competitors and, if possible, to do so in a way that helps build a rich network of attractive and distinctive associations around the brand. A "rich" name offers an easy jumping off point for the patterns of associations, generally encoded in words or images, from which a brand derives its power.

Summary
A brand may change its name for a number of reasons. The rebranding process will have a direct impact on the success of the name change. Name changes often result in a drop in sales, but when the process is done well, sales can hold steady. However, if a poor strategy is followed, a name change puts the brand at risk of losing equity, consumer loyalty and ultimately market share.

Summary
Anthony Shore gives his six tips on what NOT to do when naming a company or product. These include: waiting until the last minute; be sure the new name is descriptive, begins with the letter A and has no negative connotations; develop names that have no meaning; invite the entire company to brainstorm; have a contest; and have a focus group to pick the winner.

Summary
In the Asia-Pacific region, supernatural beliefs traditionally are believed to have a strong influence on product sales performance. In particular, name-giving—whether to a person or a product—has a strong perceived connection to fate. This study examined the relationship between branding practices and supernatural beliefs in China. In more than 50 percent of the cases we studied, the creation of brand names was based, in part, on a “lucky” number of total strokes drawn in creation of the characters that spelled out the brand name. Reinforcing that finding was the discovery that brand names comprising a lucky total-stroke number were more common in high-uncertain than low-uncertain market environments.

Summary
Field research and a laboratory study were conducted to empirically examine the effects of brand relevance, connotation, and pronunciation on consumers' preferences for new brand names. The context theory of memory retrieval and the simplicity principle provided the foundation for our research hypotheses. In both cases, study results supported the main effects of relevance, connotation, and pronunciation of brand names on consumers' brand preference. In addition, results showed that the contribution of connotation will be attenuated if the brand name is difficult to pronounce.

Summary
Jon Montgomery, a partner at Hudson Group New York, and Michael Lieberman, president of Multivariate Solutions, ague that quantitative evaluation is an essential component in the brand naming process. Using a (disguised) case study, they describe Brandcom™ - a research methodology that can be used to determine objectively and competitively the most suitable brand name (and/or packaging).

Summary
Lee Curtis, a trademark attorney at the Leeds office of Pinsent Masons, discusses the dangers that Google, Xerox and Jacuzzi run if they fail to protect their trade marks - and the ways to prevent familiar brand names going the same way as escalator, linoleum, and, even, sandwich.

Summary
Rod Hirsch explores how branding works in the technology market sector. With examples from Microsoft, Symantec, Apple, and, even Toyota, he analyses the branding strategies of the winning companies.