Research On The Effects Of Brand Extensions Under Cross-Culture Background

In such a competitive environment nowadays, enterprises keep promoting new products in order to meet the consumer demands. Brand extension is not only a strategy commonly used to introduce new products, but also an essential way to take advantage of the brand equity. Although brand extension can benefit enterprises in many ways, they also bring potential risks. Therefore, it is key to judge whether brand extension is favorable in a given situation.Since the introduction of A&K Model by Aaker & Keller in the 1990s, the study on the effects of brand extension has focused on consumer evaluations. Later, many scholars conducted general experiments to test this model but arrived at different conclusions.This thesis firstly reviews the current achievements in this field and develops new evaluation models according to the A&K Model. The new model retains perceived quality and fit (including complement, substitute and transfer) in A&K Model, and removes production difficulty which has been proved to be an insignificant factor by previous studies. To investigate new factors, the author also adds brand association and UAI value into the model based on some relevant studies.This study focuses on the research of six brands and eighteen of their extensions. First-hand data are collected by distributing questionnaires. Respondents are the citizens of China and Singapore. Qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis are conducted to draw the final conclusions: complement, transfer, brand association and UAI have significant and direct effect on the evaluations of brand extensions by customers, while perceived quality and substitution have indirect effect on that. In the end, this thesis summarizes the main conclusions, enlightenments, the shortness of this study and future research trends.