外来的和尚更会念经吗?——外国式品牌命名研究述评与展望

Are Foreign Monks Better at Chanting Sutras? A Literature Review of Foreign Branding and Prospects

外国式品牌命名(foreign branding)是运用外语拼写或发音的品牌命名策略,采用这一策略的品牌称为外国式品牌。在品牌家族中,这些"外来的和尚"是否更会念经?由于相应的理论探讨较为缺乏,且结论不尽一致,导致企业在运用外国式品牌命名策略时缺乏有效的指导。本文希望通过对以往研究的总结归纳来提炼规律,并指明未来研究主题。首先通过品牌原产国和品牌来源的有关文献明确了外国式品牌命名的内涵,阐述了这一策略的理论基础。在此基础上,本文分析了外国式品牌的单独作用、与原产国的交互作用,以及产品、消费者、发达国家和发展中国家背景等调节因素的影响。最后,文章提出了未来四大研究方向,即发展中国家品牌在国际市场上的外国式品牌命名、非西方的外国式品牌命名、无明确国家指向性的外国式品牌命名,以及全球品牌视角下的外国式品牌命名问题。

Foreign branding is the strategy of spelling or pronouncing a brand name in a foreign language. Brands employing foreign branding strategy are referred to as foreign-sounding brand name（s）. Foreign branding has been widely used by companies worldwide. Are foreign-sounding brand names, like ＂foreign monks＂ in the big brand family, better at chanting sutras？ No ready answer exists. Although the concept of foreign branding was put forward thirty years ago, theoretical investigations are limited and research findings are inconsistent. Companies lack guidelines on how to use foreign branding strategy effectively. This paper aims to then to raise several avenues for future research. reveal some pattems by an extensive literature review, This paper holds that foreign branding is to make foreign pronunciation or spelling as a clue which may trigger particular associations in consumer minds and then influence consumer perception and attitudes. Theories such as brand association, national and culture stereotypes, brand clue and perceived brand globalness all provide theoretical grounds for this phenomenon. First, the ＂foreign＂ component in a foreign-sounding brand name may bring brand origin association and produces country-of-origin effect accordingly. Second, when such brand names evoke consumer associations about one particular single country or a group of countries, national and culture stereotypes will be activated and influence consumer judgement and evaluation. Third, in a globalized market, these brands can increase consumers＇ perceived brand foreignness and globalness with their ＂foreign＂ or ＂global＂ attributes, leading to better acceptance for consumers with global and/or cosmopolitan identity. Lastly, thanks to the self-brand image congruence, the global consumer culture positioning embedded in foreign-sounding brands can induce resonance and positive responses from consumers with global orientation. The existent research related to foreign branding focuses on several topics including how foreign branding influences consumer behavior separately and jointly with country-of-origin information, as well as the moderating effects of consumer-, product- and country background-related factors. The research findings show that the main effect of foreign branding is unclear, nor is the mechanism; the interaction effect of foreign branding and country-of-origin is inconsistent. Moreover, the effects of foreign branding may be influenced by factors like product category （hedonic/utilitarian/hybrid; high involved/low involved）, consumer ethnocentrism, gender and country category （developed country/developing country）. With regard to methodology, ecological validity is limited because previous research often involves experimental manipulation. When considering consumer reactions to the incongruence between the COO implied by the brand name and the actual COO, the literature takes a cognitive perspective and focuses on information processing. It neglects the fact that there exist two types of actual CO0 （home country vs. foreign country） which might result in differential consumer reactions. Furthermore, global brands and emerging markets do not receive sufficient attention. Rather, in the literature, specific countries are often associated with foreign branding. On the basis of a literature review, this paper puts forward four future research avenues, including foreign branding of go-global emerging brands, nonwestern foreign branding, foreign branding unassociated with any specific country, and foreign branding in the light of global branding.