What is in a Name Change? Re-Joycing Corporate Names to Create Corporate Brands

Abstract

Twenty years ago a corporate name was simply a trade name that described an industry, a service or a product (most often the corporate name was the founder's patronym). The study reported in this paper reveals that as companies are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of corporate reputation, they are managing their corporate names more actively and treating them as corporate brands rather than merely trade names. Newly created brand names are now consciously designed to evoke associations with a set of core corporate values that typically focus on themes such as life, competence, unity, vision and performance. By focusing on values that are common to most corporations, however, corporate branding may fail in one of its foremost goals, which is to create differentiation. This paper provides an analysis of the corporate re-naming phenomenon and discusses its implications for corporate brand naming.