Leveraging Brands through Extensions and Factors Influencing Consumer Acceptance of Extensions across Product Categories

Abstract

Brand Managers often resort to brand extension strategies to reduce the risk of launching a new product in the market and to take advantage of the success of an existing successful brand. The image of parent brand helps the marketer to reduce teh cost of introducing and establishing an extension. Intrinsically the new extension also helps in strenthening the parent brand in the market as the marketing communication of the extension also helps the target customers to recall the master brand. The common proposition is that customers tend to associate an extension more closely if it is in a similar category and if the master brand's image is good then consumers go for a favourable evaluation of the extended brand. Innovative consumers also favourably evaluate an extended brand. This research paper looks into these three key issues ie, category similarly, image of the master brand and consumer innovativeness and their role in creating a favourable consumer evaluation of the brand extension...