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Research MethodologyThis study investigates 600 Korean brands of soft drinks and spirits. The sample for the analysis is from the latest edition of the database entitled The Brands of Korea. The database developed by the Korean Institute of Patent Information has documented Korean brands officially registered since 1950. We selected the product category of soft drinks and spirits registered during 1950-2001 for investigative analysis. Soft drinks and spirits are very popular products in Korea. The soft drink and spirit industry have been well developed for the last two decades. Their brand names should reflect the features of Korean naming of brands. The database lists 1,581 names of soft drinks and spirits. Before carrying out content analysis, a careful scanning of the list was done. We excluded company brand names (e.g., Jinro). This has to do with family brand names that apply to different products of the same category by the same company. English- spelling names (e.g., Starbucks) were also excluded as the purpose of this study is to stress the ling- uistic characteristics of Korean brand naming. Brands registered as logos, signs, and symbols were also excluded. After scanning and exclusion, we obtained the final sample for data analysis, which includes 600 brands of soft drinks. We first looked at selected brands from three linguistic areas: phonetic/phonological features, morpholog- ical/syntactic structures, and semantic interpretations. Based on the analyses, the proposed seven rese- arch hypotheses governing Korean naming of brands were verified. To test the proposed hypotheses, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. For qualitative methods, the sample brands were content analyzed. For quantitative methods, descriptive statistics were examined. One-way ANOVA was also employed to test mean differences between groups. |
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