Research On Consumers’ Explicit And Tacit Product Cognition And Its Consistency Of Brand Extension

Brand extension is one of the most important methods of enterprise marketing,and it is an important branch of marketing research. With the deepening of the brandextension research, the study of the factors that can affect the consumers’ brandextension evaluation becomes more and more comprehensive, but study of theconsumers’ different cognition to the parent and extension product is missing.Consumers have different cognition to different product attributes. They mayhave strong cognition to some product attributes, but have weak cognition to othersproduct attributes. So consumers have two different kinds of cognition. They areexplicit attribute cognition and tacit attribute cognition.The effect of fit to brand extension is proved by many papers. But all thepapers are based on that consumers have the same cognition with the parent andextension product attribute. And these papers do not mention the situation of differentcognition.With the explicit attribute cognition and tacitly attribute cognition, the effect ofbrand extension by the fit of one attribute will be changed. If consumers haveexplicit attribute cognition to the parent and extension product, then fit will give thebrand extension positive effect, and not fit will give brand extension negative effect.If consumers have tacit attribute cognition to the parent and extension product, fit ornot fit will not affect brand extension. If consumers have explicit attribute cognitionand tacit attribute cognition to parent and extension product, no matter fit or notfit, brand extension will have negative effect.Because of the quantity of consumer cognition, this paper will choose one kindof consumer cognition, and prove the exit of the explicit attribute cognition and tacitattribute cognition. Also this paper will prove the effect on brand extension by itsconsistency.