It is true that in some specific cases, brands manage to develop the Chinese market without taking many advantages of a Chinese brand name. However, a Chinese name is very important on two aspects for a brand, be it foreign or Chinese. Firstly, a popular Chinese name can prevent the brands from being copied, furthermore, from being misunderstood by consumers. The famous French brand Lacoste having a crocodile logo has no official Chinese name in Mainland. As a result, the Chinese term ‘鳄鱼’ meaning ‘Crocodile’ is being used by both a Singapore brand Cartelo and a Hong Kong brand Crocodile. What’s more, the crocodile logo and Chinese name 鳄鱼 are used in many counterfeit goods. These phenomena make it very troublesome for Lacoste to protect its intellectual property and to develop the Chinese market. Secondly, from the perspective of branding PR, a well chosen Chinese name can easily catch the attention of related governmental officials and media people.
Cartelo shop with the english and chinese name
Name is value.
In fact, whether the brand is international or domestic a suitable Chinese name will be the first step of a successful branding strategy. No matter the brand is luxurious or not, no matter the target consumers are well-educated or not, a good Chinese name will always be accepted easily and bring rich association, which makes it easier to promote the brand. There are numerous successful examples: Nestle（“雀巢”）,Mercedes-Benz（“奔驰”）, Lenovo（“联想”）, Baidu（“百度”）. The successes of these brands are all partly contributed by their Chinese names.
Naming mistake
In February 2006, an American brand of software and IT solutions – “Computer Associate” withdrew the use of its former Chinese name 冠群 (冠guàn- hat/champion 群qún – group/cluster). Indeed this Chinese name has not been able to convey the international characteristic of the brand nor to link the brand with high tech industry. Changing name will result in a huge communication cost and re-branding efforts. Therefore, a Chinese name has to be carefully chosen, otherwise a huge loss may be caused in the future!
Naming with acronyms
Some international brands such as LG and AMD use only letter abbreviation as their names, but they are supported by formidable technical strengths and high internationalization. The same situation does not apply to TCL, a local Chinese brand without strong economical support or technical background. The fact is TCL has quite a few problems in its marketing activities: this kind of English letter abbreviation cannot create an intellectual and emotional bound with the Chinese customers.
There may not be a strong negative influence in a short time if a brand does not hold a Chinese name or if it has one that is not suitable. However, it makes the brand face a strong risk in marketing. What’s more, it’s a big disadvantage for the long-term development of the brand. A brand without a suitable Chinese name will suffer from a weak brand equity and a high exposure to instability. We believed that the name is one of the most important intangible assets of a brand. A good Chinese name could tighten the relation between the Chinese customers and the brand, open up the market perspective in China by speaking to a larger audience, and also easily forms the brand reference in a way consistent with the cultural characteristics of the country.
Chinese name in Asia
Chinese mainland is a giant market that has been luring most of the international brands. At the same time, the Chinese language has a dominant status in Asia because a huge population of Chinese is traveling or doing business around Asia. In this connection, a Chinese name can not only help the brand promote well in the mainland, but has the possibility to extend this advantage to Southeast-Asian markets. In the past, some international brands, particularly the European and American brands, used to have different Chinese names in different Asian regions, according to the local dialects and language customs. For example, Biotherm (L’Oréal Group) uses 碧欧泉 (碧bì- green jade; 欧ōu - Europe; 泉quán - spring) in China Mainland, but uses碧儿泉(碧bì- green jade;儿ér- here empty meaning泉quán - spring) in areas beyond the Mainland.
But with Mainland opening to the world with frequent exchanges, discrepancy of Chinese name across the region has brought many puzzles and inconvenience to the consumers. Even from the brand management angle, using two or several Chinese names in Asia increases the management cost on one hand and causes disadvantages to the overall branding strategy on the other hand. Therefore at present, more international brands favor in Asia the adoption of unified Chinese brand names and corresponding logos.
