Making sense of numbers: Effects of alphanumeric brands on consumer inference

Dengfeng Yan and Rod Duclos

International Journal of Research in Marketing, 2013, vol. 30, issue 2, 179-184

Abstract: This research examines when and how the presence of seemingly innocuous, non-diagnostic numbers in brand names (e.g., 7-UP) impacts consumers' judgments. Building on anchoring theory, our central proposition is that numbers contained in alphanumeric brand names can act as implicit anchors that subsequently bias (either upward or downward) consumers' assessment of a product's price, weight, volume, etc. We qualify this proposition, however, by showing that such anchoring effects occur primarily when (a) the numeric component of a name appears relevant to the judgment at hand and (b) consumers evaluate product attributes superficially (rather than systematically).

Keywords: Alphanumeric brand names; Anchoring; Heuristic processing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167811612000936
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ijrema:v:30:y:2013:i:2:p:179-184

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijresmar.2012.09.007

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Research in Marketing is currently edited by Roland Rust

More articles in International Journal of Research in Marketing from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().