Product quality, image, and salient association levels as factors in brand extendability.

摘要

In brand extension, a current brand name is used to enter a different product category or class (Aaker and Keller 1990; Reddy et al. 1994). This study deals with two main questions that impact how parent brands can be successfully extendible to different products: (1) how the overall product quality of a parent brand and a brand-image extension (symbolic vs. functional) interactively affect the extendibility of a parent brand and (2) how the generality level of salient brand associations (e.g., a concrete attribute vs. a benefit) affects the extendibility.; A total of 269 subjects who took business courses participated in an experiment. A mixed factorial design was used in Part A to test the effects of parent brand image (functional vs. symbolic), product quality (high vs. low), extension product image (functional vs. symbolic), and physical similarity between a parent brand and an extension product (high vs. low). A mixed factorial design was used in Part B to test the effect of salient brand association levels between the parent brand and the extension product. Psychological fit was a mediating variable in both parts.; A close extension of a positive parent brand led to significantly higher evaluation scores on its extension products than a far extension. A brand with high (vs. low) product quality led to significantly higher evaluation scores. Both symbolic and functional consistency between a parent brand and an extension product were found to have beneficial effects on the evaluations. An interaction effect between product quality and an image extension (symbolic vs. functional) was supported. In the high quality condition the symbolic brand had higher evaluations than did the functional brand. Consumers generally gave higher similarity and evaluation scores to extension products under a matched condition than under an unmatched condition or a neutral condition. Findings suggest different strategies based on an interaction between product quality and an image extension and a salient brand association level.