Product naming is one of the most important communication decisions for any firm to deliver product information to consumers. Product names are highly likely to have critical impacts on the market performances of products, in particular, consisting of unobservable attributes such as motion pictures, music, books, and games. The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of product naming strategies on their market performances and provide managerial implications on how to name products, especially for experience goods such as movies. We, firstly, suggest a conceptual framework to describe naming decisions as two-stage strategic decisions. The first stage decision is about what type of product information should be provided to consumers via a product name, which we call information choice strategy, and the second stage decision is about how to express the product information in the name, which we call expression strategy. We develop a two-level hierarchical Bayesian log-linear model to consider the main effects of product information strategy with the 1st level of the model, and the mediate effects of expression strategies with the 2nd level of the model. We applied the model to a data set consisting of viewership, names, and release dates of 634 movies released in eight countries where English is an official language. We have decided the types of naming strategies with the help of three industry practitioners, who have been working in the film industry for over 10 years as a producer, marketer, and investor, respectively. The country characteristics, obtained from Hofsted's Homepage (National culture scores of each country) and the World Bank (GDP and population of each country at the released t year), were considered for country heterogeneity. The empirical results show that information choice for movie titles have significant impacts on the movie viewership. Especially, movie titles including story or negative words have more positive impact on their market performances. One of the important findings is that the effects of “what to choose” depends on “how to express”. For example, not frequently used words, nonwords, proper nouns, foreign words in movie titles have positive impacts on the viewership. Popular words used for movie titles have a positive influence directly on the viewership. Interestingly, while sentences for movie titles have negative impacts on the viewership, storyline and theme expressed in sentences show positive impacts on the viewership. Another important finding is the mediating effects of country and product heterogeneities. The effects of naming strategy differs across movie genres and country characteristics. This study makes at least three contributions to the literature. Firstly, this study suggest a conceptual framework an empirical model for naming strategies in the literature. Secondly, this study provides information on what type of naming strategies are more effective on market performance, which has never been addressed in the literature. Lastly, the study provides some managerial implications which are useful for researchers and industry practitioners who are interested in product naming.

• Jiyeon Eoh(Sogang University)
• Jaihak Chung(Sogang University)