A Research On Customers Evaluation Of Brand Extension Towards Brand Image Of Chinese Internet Companies

The brand is important intangible asset to enterprises. Today, in China, we can see more and more companies, using of existing brands to extend directly to other areas for business expansion, such as introduction of new products, entering new markets, setting up a new business unit, etc. This condition is not common in traditional manufacturing industries; it also easy to find examples in the Internet industry. However, when the Chinese Internet enterprises implement the brand extension strategies, whether the consumer evaluation towards brand extension had effect on or not, or how to affect the relationship to the companies'brand image, there are not too many articles in the previous literature according to the Chinese internet company's brand extension research.To solve the above problems and shortcomings, this study, based on the Chinese context, takes the Chinese Internet companies as objects, and through the quasi-experimental methods, it collects consumers'experimental data to study consumer evaluation of brand extension towards brand image.Main courses of the study are as follows:First, through analysis of the literature review of brand extension, consumer reviews, brand image, and using mature theoretical framework in manufacturing or consumer goods industries, making certain adjustments to Chinese Internet industry, this study builds the idea of this study and research frameworks, and analyzes reliability and validity for scale validation. Then, through the collection of small-scale questionnaire, the study obtains the most familiar consumer brands of the two Internet companies-Tencent and Baidu as the study objects; meanwhile, through interviews with experts to get extension products of these two brands:high involvement product and low involvement product, respectively. And then, through the 2X2 quasi-experimental approach to design experimental questionnaire, the study collects 406 questionnaires. Based on empirical analysis, by using SPSS18.0 and Amos17.0 software for large sample analysis of sample data, there come the following conclusions: First, based on the context of Chinese internet companies, the study revises dimension of brand extension and brand image; Second, under the brand extension dimensions:the perceived quality of parent brand, perceived fit between parent brand and extension products showed a positive correlation with consumer evaluation; Third, consumers evaluation had a positive correlation with brand image; fourth, perceived fit between parent brand and extension products, and transfer positively affected the brand image; Fifth, product involvement adjusts the effects between brand extension and consumer evaluation to some degree.Conclusions of this study not only expand the applications of brand extension theory in the field of Chinese internet industry, but also according to the special situation of Chinese Internet companies, they enrich the meaning, dimension structure of brand extension theory and brand image theory.