The Research On The Paradox Of Consumers Perceived Fit And Extension Evaluation

In the current competition in the market, Brand extension become their oftenused marketing strategy for their new products entering the market. Since theawareness and the brand association of the parent brand of consumers that can bepassed directly to the new products, Therefore, use of the brand extension strategy canreduce much of the cost that marketing new products, also it could increase the salesof the parent brand products. But, the failure rate that the companies implementing thebrand extension strategies is high, Once it is failed, it will cause significant losses ofthe parent brand value. Therefore, the research of the various factors that affectingbrand extension has very important theoretical and practical significance.Previous studies found that among of the all factors that influence the success ofextension, the perceived fit has the greatest impact for that whether the extendedproduct can extend successful. There are two kinds of relationships between theevaluation of consumer for the extension products and the perceived fit, one is apositive linear correlation between the two, the other is an inverted U-shapedrelationship between them. Namely with respect to the high-fit extension products,the moderate fit extension product is evaluated more favorably. Previous studies havedemonstrated that the high involvement of consumers is the conditions of theemergence that the inverted U-shaped curve that between extension evaluation andperceived fit. When involvement is high, the consumer will elaborate the extensionproducts. While the brand concept types are different, will lead to different brandassociations to consumers, thereby affecting their evaluation to the extensionproducts.Therefore, this paper on the basis of previous studies, from the view of theconsumer, brand and product, using questionnaires, by manipulating these threevariables that consumer involvement, brand concept type and perceived fit,exploringthe condition that the perceived fit and brand extension evaluation showing theinverted U-shaped curve. The experiment found that only for the prestigious brand,and in the context of high Involvement, the evaluation of consumer for moderate fitextension products will be significantly higher than the evaluation of its extremelyhigh or low fit extension product, namely appears the inverted U-shaped curve. Inother cases, the evaluation of consumer for the extension products and their perceived fit are positively correlated. Subsequent studies confirmed that the consumers’purchase decision may be one of the reasons that the appearance of the inverted U-shaped curve. This study has supplemented the theoretical models that factors ofbrand extension, and it has important practical significance for the promotion ofextension products that are different perceived fit of different concept type.