Luck of the Draw: Creating Chinese Brand Names

In the Asia-Pacific region, supernatural beliefs traditionally are believed to have a strong influence on product sales performance. In particular, name-giving-whether to a person or a product-has a strong perceived connection to fate. This study examined the relationship between branding practices and supernatural beliefs in China. In more than 50 percent of the cases we studied, the creation of brand names was based, in part, on a "lucky" number of total strokes drawn in creation of the characters that spelled out the brand name. Reinforcing that finding was the discovery that brand names comprising a lucky total-stroke number were more common in high-uncertain than low-uncertain market environments.