Modeling Consumer Evaluation Of Service Brand Extension

With the increasing importance of the brand in the modern economic, companies pay more attention to the management of the intangible assets. When companies are trying to launch a new product, brand extension which is able to increase the acceptability and positive expectations of the new product, reduce risk and marketing costs, provide positive feedback for the parent brand and improve customer loyalty and so on, as a more important and effective strategy is widely used in practice. At the same time, the rapid development of the tertiary industry, the service sector began to receive much attention. How to define、classify and evaluate service brand extension? This is the focus of discussion in this study.This study first reviews and summarizes the previous brand extension research classification, consumer evaluation of brand extension, as well as some service brand extension research, then set up a relatively complete theoretical framework; secondly define the concept of service brand extension, propose the research classification and the influencing factors that affect the consumer evaluation of service brand extension, then build a service brand extension evaluation model. The model of service brand extension evaluation include the characteristics of parent brand、extension product characteristics and consumer characteristics, which consider the perceived quality of the parent brand, fit, perceived risk and consumer innovative. Where the model is different from the A&K model is to add the consideration of consumer characteristics and perceived extension risk, given the characteristics of the service. On this basis, the hypothesis of this study are proposed and assumptions through empirical validation.The results show that perceived quality of parent brand, fit between extension product/service and parent brand, perceived risk and consumers innovative are the main factors affecting consumer evaluation of services brand extension. Perceived quality of parent brand, fit and consumers innovative are positively related to service brand extension evaluation. Perceived risk of extending product/service and service brand extension consumer evaluation are negatively correlated.