Effect of Customer Name on Brand Choices:

The Role of Letters as Visual Information

Abstract

People perceive letters of their names more favorably than those not included in their names. This tendency is called the name-letter effect, which can affect various types of decision-making, including brand choices. For example, a consumer named Lundy (vs. Thomas) is more likely to purchase a Lexus car, which shares the same initial. This study examines how name letters affect consumers’ brand choices when brand names are written in Japanese kanji script. Previous studies have shown that kanji is processed as visual rather than auditory information. On the basis of this linguistic nature, the authors predict that the name-letter effect in kanji is caused by the congruence between a brand name and a consumer’s name in spelling and pronunciation (vs. only in pronunciation). An analysis of actual purchase data concerning OTC stomach medicine named Ohta’s Isan (太田胃酸) revealed that consumers whose name letters match those in the brand name (太田), both in pronunciation and kanji spelling, are more likely to purchase the medicine than consumers whose name is pronounced the same but is written in different kanji spellings (大田and 多田), or consumers whose name shares neither the kanji spelling nor the pronunciation.