Acceptance of brand extensions: Interactive influences of product category similarity, typicality of claimed benefits, and brand relationship quality

The present research investigated and demonstrated the strategic importance of building and maintaining a strong consumer-brand relationship within the context of introducing extensions of a brand. Five hundred and fifty housewives participated in a field experiment and evaluated potential extensions of a well-known national brand in the grocery food category. The extensions were systematically varied across subjects in terms of whether the extension categories were similar or dissimilar to the original brand category (category similarity) as well as whether the specific benefit claimed about the extensions were typical or atypical of the original brand schema (benefit typicality). Results indicated that overall, the perceived brand relationship quality had a significant and positive impact on the extent to which consumers accepted the proposed extensions. In addition, the brand relationship quality significantly interacted with benefit typicality and category similarity. Specifically, when the extension category was similar to the original brand category, for subjects in a weak relationship with the brand, an extension appeared to be evaluated more positively when the claimed benefit was typical of the original brand association than when it was not. By contrast, this pattern was reversed for subjects in a strong brand relationship. When the extension category was dissimilar to the original brand category, however, the extension with a typical benefit being claimed was always evaluated more favorably than the one with an atypical benefit, regardless of whether consumers had a strong or week relationship with the brand. These results are generally consistent with implications of the literature on psychological processes underlying category-based judgments and in-group biases.