中文摘要：

品牌管理者最首要的决策就是选择一个好记的或有意义的品牌名字。由于任何特征的品牌名字都必须借助消费者的认知差异来实现真正的差异化，因此，从消费者认知特点出发研究暗示性品牌名字就显得尤为重要和有意义。本文通过3个实验，分别验证了消费者认知需要和专业化水平对品牌名称暗示性与决策选择的调节作用。方差分析发现：低专业化水平的消费者更倾向于根据暗示性的品牌名字做出决策，而高专业化水平的消费者则不受品牌名称暗示程度的影响。此外，低认知需要的消费者比较喜欢暗示性的品牌名字，而对于高认知需要的消费者来说，品牌名字的暗示性程度不会对其决策过程产生影响。最后，研究结果揭示了专业化水平和认知需要对暗示性品牌名字效果发挥具有交互作用。对于具有高专业化水平的消费者来说，无论他们处于低认知需要还是高认知需要，品牌名字的暗示程度都不会影响他们的态度形成。相反地，对于具有低专业化水平的消费者来说，无论是低认知需要还是高认知需要均倾向于暗示性的品牌名字。而对于专业化程度中等的消费者而言，暗示性品牌名字效用的发挥则取决于其处理信息的动机—认知需要水平。

英文摘要：

Brand name is considered as a major asset for a firm. A good brand name can enhance brand awareness and serve as an important means to build brand equity. One emerging research area in branding is about the suggestiveness of brand names. Prior research shows that a suggestive brand name conveying descriptive or persuasive information about the product category can better induce consumers＇ favorable brand evaluations than nonsuggestive brand names. However, little research has examined the impact of consumers＇ individual characteristics on the effectiveness of suggestive brand names. Our research investigates this very issue, Specifically, we aim to examine how consumers＇ individual characteristics （i.e., expertise and need for cognition） interact with brand name suggestiveness in inducing consumers＇ ad attitude, brand attitude, and purchase intention. We hypothesized that a suggestive brand name would only lead to more favorable ad attitudes, brand attitudes and purchase intention than nonsuggestive brand names among consumers of low expertise and those with low need for cognition. We also examined the three-way interaction among expertise, need for cognition, and brand name suggestiveness. We hypothesized that the interaction between need for cognition and brand name suggestiveness depends on the levels of consumer expertise. Three experimental studies were conducted to examine the above predictions. The first study 1 employed 2 （brand name suggestiveness： suggestive vs. nonsuggestive） x 2 （expertise： high vs. low） between-subjects design with 128 university students. The results of ANOVA analysis indicated that, compared with nonsuggestive brand name, low expertise consumers showed more favorable ad attitudes, brand attitudes, and purchase intention towards the suggestive brand name. Study 2 employed 2 （brand name suggestiveness： suggestive vs. nonsuggestive） x 2 （need for cognition： high vs. low） between-subjects design with 144 university students to investigate the role o