Investors Will Like Your Company Better if You Shorten Its Name

HBR Blog Network / The Daily Stat

8:30 AM September 12, 2013

On average, companies with short, simple names attract more shareholders, generate greater amounts of stock trading, and perform better on certain financial measures than companies with hard-to-process names such as National Oilwell Varco and Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, say T. Clifton Green of Emory University and Russell E. Jame of the University of Kentucky. A 1-step increase in name "fluency" on a 5-step scale, such as reducing name length by 1 word, is associated with a 2.53% increase in market-to-book ratio, which would translate to $3.75 million in added market value for the median-size firm in the authors' sample. Selecting an easy-to-process company name is a low-cost method for improving investor recognition and increasing firm value, the authors say.

SOURCE: Company name fluency, investor recognition, and firm value