Selected Projects

(03/03) KFC or Kentucky Fried Chicken: Consumer Support for Abbreviated Branding

with Kurt Munz (Bocconi University)

• Manuscript in preparation for submission to Journal of Marketing 

Brands are viewed as one of the most valuable marketing assets; that’s why choosing an appropriate brand name is a crucial marketing decision. One of the brand naming strategies that companies use is abbreviated branding (e.g., “KFC” for “Kentucky Fried Chicken,” “NASA” for “National Aeronautics and Space Administration”). Despite their widespread use, research on how abbreviated branding influences consumer perceptions and brand support remains unclear. While managers believe in the positive impacts of using this naming strategy, across six studies—including an archived dataset of almost 700 top U.S. national brands, Facebook field data, and four experiments using both fictitious and real brands—we find that abbreviated brand names violate expected morphology, or the accepted structure of words, that leads to consumers generally showing less support for brands with abbreviated names. Mediation and moderation analyses reveal that this effect is driven by processing disfluency—abbreviated brand names are difficult for consumers to understand and evaluate. However, the findings also suggest that this branding strategy can be beneficial when abbreviated brand names sound fluent, as this facilitates easier brand information processing. Additionally, abbreviations may benefit brands in disfavored product categories (e.g., tobacco) or when brands are associated with competence cues (e.g., high-tech products). This research advances psycholinguistic research in marketing and the emerging area of brand linguistics by focusing on morphological linguistics.

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