[ set DATA_HOME $env(UNIWEB_DOC_ROOT) source $DATA_HOME/init.appl ] Brand Naming in Korea : A Linguistic Approach

Conclusion

Naming a brand is a complicated task and the linguistic aspect of brand names is of particular concern to those who want a successful product. The crux of the matter for industry is to find which linguistic styles could be best for the naming of brands. Each of the major linguistic components proves to be effective in the analysis of approximately 600 soft drinks and spirits in Korean brand names, and this result may set up a general branding framework applied to all products.

This framework is composed of morphological features (compounds with a structure of modifier-noun), phonological features (multi-syllable names, for- eign-l-ike names, names in syllables without coda or with coda of liquids or nasals), semantic features (names with positive connotation), and syntactic features (phrasal names).

In this study we attempted to generalize the characteristics of Korean naming of brands from a linguistic perspective and identified the preferred syllable, morphological/syntactic, and semantic patterns. Our belief is that the result could contribute to the establishment of an in-depth linguistic foundation for guiding principles in the naming of brands in Korean and that it provides insights for further research in the future.

Despite of the important contributions of the present study, it has some limitations which may be further clarified in future research. One limitation is that strategic considerations in the naming of brands had not been taken into in the present study. Often the naming of the brands is guided by the rules of competition in the marketplace where the linguistic principles of the naming of brands are not put in the first priority.

Further research may be performed to investigate how the linguistic approach to the naming of brands can be practically applied to the situation that the naming of brands are dominated by strategic considerations. Another limitation of the present study is related to the generalizability of the results of the study. Further research should expand product categories even including brand names of services. Also a study differentiating successful and unsuccessful  brand names needs to be performed to find key success elements in the naming of brands.                      

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