A Study On Brand Extension Tactics Based On Customers' Cognitive Trends

Since 1990's, brand extension has been a hot spot with more and more attention in the theory circle of marketing management, and it has become a general trend that enterprises of different trades take it as their strategic development core. More and more enterprises exploit their existing brands rather than create new brands when they enter new markets.But brand extension is a two-bladed sword: an enterprise will develop with redoubled might if it is implemented well; but if it is implemented blindly, brand extension is not helpful to expanding new products or new businesses, and it may even damage existing brand capital. So an enterprise must analyze thoroughly the conditions, running rules and influential factors in brand extension.There are two main problems in brand extension of enterprises in China. Firstly, rational considerations and scientific analysis lack in brand extension. Because of profit impulse, some enterprises often find only various advantages in brand extension, follow other successful enterprises, neglect their own practical situations, and extend their brands before they have occupied their main markets. Secondly, they do not stress and study consumers' psychological reception enough. Many enterprises extend their brands with their own wishful thinking, lack analyses on the complexity and seriousness in market, and ignore consumers' psychology. Therefore, it has practical importance to explore and research the theory and tactics of brand extension.By means of consumer psychology & behavior theory, brand management theory, emotion transfer model and associated requirements model, this paper studied consumers' psychological mechanisms in brand extension, clarified the importance of consumer factor in brand extension, proposed a series of brand extension tactics based on customers' cognitive trends, Including promotion of brand's key value, enlarging brand extension space, selection of proper strategies of brand extension, exploring the relationship between brand and the qualities of its extending products, paying attention to the psychic conflict of consumers. Meanwhile, other aspects of brand extension, such as various factors of enterprise and market, time, rate and extent of brand extension were also proposed.Finally, it provided some theoretical and practical references for an enterprise to extend its brands after analyzing typical cases in brand extension,...