Grey Evaluation Model And Analysis Of Service Brand Extension

As for brand extension, it has been in the frontier of marketing theory and brand research, and the evaluation of brand extension is an important branch. By evaluating of brand extension, extension efficiency will be enhanced and extension risk will be avoided, which is with practical significance. During the past thirty years, scholars have devoted themselves to explore factors affecting brand extension, the evaluation system is developing with substantial relevant researches, but little service-specific research has focused on this domain so far. As the service industry accounts for an ever-growing share of the global economy, service management is becoming increasingly important. Little is known, however, about the extent to which brand equity transfers to unrelated categories in a services context, so further studies on evaluation theories and methods of service brand extension are valuable.We have structured the study as follows. First, relevant literature on brand extensions is reviewed quickly, and the researches are divided into service brand extension (SBE) and goods brand extension (GBE). Secondly, based on thoroughly analysis of SBE evaluation system and model, the consumer choice model of SBE is constructed and the empirical analysis proves the value of SBE. Next, the grey evaluation model of SBE is proposed, which adopts service quality indexes and embodies dynamic properties. Subsequently, grey synthetic analysis of SBE in a china context is continued, and a number of theoretical and managerial implications are obtained. Lastly, with information aggregation in grey incidence degree taken into consideration, a new evaluation model of SBE based on uncertainty number is constructed, and the results show that the new model is with good accuracy and practical. In a word, all of the above compose innovations of the dissertation.Some valuable theoretical and managerial conclusions are obtained by empirical analysis:(1) Parent brand has positive effect on both extension goods and extension service. By analysis of brand extension choice, it shows that values of extension brands are higher than new brands for both SBE and GBE, and parent brand has positive effect on both extension goods and extension service subsequently.(2) The factor of brand has higher value in SBE than in GBE. With intangibility of services, it's believed that service is hard to evaluate. The comparison study between SBE choice and GBE choice shows that the factor of brand is more important in SBE than in GBE, so characteristics of parent brand are worthy to be intensively studied further.(3) The factor of price plays different roles according to purchasing behavior. As for dissonance-reducing behavior, lower price means higher perceived value, while price is viewed as quality during diversification seeking. So managers should apply price strategy combined with purchasing behavior.(4) Transfer is a salient clue to evaluate extensions in a service context. Present study shows that transfer is superior to complementary, which differs much from the study of Van Riel (2001), but confirms conclusions of GBE study.(5) Perceived quality of parent brand is vital in SBE. As for this, there is a great discrepancy between relevant studies in Chinese context and western context. Guided by this implication, service enterprises should promote service from service quality to satisfy customers.(6) Technical quality is more important than functional quality. Present study confirms subjective inferences of scholars about technical quality. Therefore, the service extension with better delivery process management will be more favorable.