Testing a New Corporate Name

Research on new corporate or brand names—when it is done at all—frequently measures only overall preference for one name over another. With such an approach, other important criteria such as distinctiveness, memorability, idea content and product-line compatibility may not receive sufficient research attention, even though they may be prime determinants of a new name's effectiveness. This article presents a case study of research on a new corporate name in which a variety of techniques were used to study the factors that are sometimes bypassed in name-testing research.