The study entitled Company names and their influence on company productivity focused on analyzing data from 17 European countries from the past twenty years. Romance, Slavic and Germanic languages were analyzed. Performance indicators, including growth in the companies' turnover, value added, and profit from shares were analyzed.
The analysis shows that the alphabetical organization of a company's name, the use of "national" words or the occurrence of English expressions plays an important role in terms of company performance. The effects vary according to the countries' language groups.
The study complements existing marketing and linguistic analyses focused mainly on brand and company names, as well as research into the impact of company names on profit from shares.
Interesting findings
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The link between alphabetical order of a company's name and its economic performance is the strongest in the services sector.
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The position of a company's name closer to the end of the alphabet appears to be particularly disadvantageous in Norway, Poland and Slovakia. The impact of this disadvantage reflects more in turnover growth than in value added and profit from the shares.
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In some countries, such as France and Poland, moving a company's name from the end of the alphabet to the start could mean an increase in turnover growth of up to two percentage points.
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The influence of "national" words in a company's name is associated with higher long-term growth in turnover especially in Poland, France and Norway. In Poland, the use of "national" words can increase long-term turnover growth by almost four percentage points.
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The influence of English words varies by language groups. While in Romance languages, English words in company names have a negative impact, in the countries of Germanic languages the influence is mixed and in Slavic countries, the influence is clearly positive.
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