Love Is Blind: The Impact of Emotional Brand Attachment on Brand Extension Success

摘要

Brand extensions, the use of established brands in new product categories, (e.g. Aaker and Keller 1990) serve as an important marketing growth strategy for a lot of new product introductions. Given that new products are prone to failure the use of an established brand can help facilitate acceptance of the new product by reducing consumers' perceived risk, enhancing efficiencies associated with distribution and promotional activities, and reduced overall costs associated with launching a new brand. Prior research on brand extensions has demonstrated that the fit between a parent brand and its extension is the most important driver of the extension's success (Volckner and Sattler 2006). However, the consumer marketplace also provides a number of examples of successful brand extensions that are distant from their parent brand, respectively with less fit to it. The role of consumers' emotional brand attachment with regard to reactions to a brand extension has largely been neglected in the literature so far. We believe that attachment theory (e.g. Bowlby 1979) can help explain why consumers differentially evaluate brand extensions. In particular, we propose that consumers who have strong emotional bonds to a brand will be less impacted by a lack of category fit of the extension with the parent brand.