The Influence Of Field Cognitive Style And Extended Path Based On Involvement To Brand Extension Implicit Attitudes

Consumer‘s attitudes and behaviors are not consistent, because of the conclusion came from researches with explicit self-report method always keep academic results in isolation from realistic application, which as a difficult problem puzzled marketing scholars. But implicit attitude will provide a new perspective for solving this problem. Drawbacks of multifarious evaluation index but lacking of unified standards and explicit self-report as a single method using in brand extension evaluation have been gradually revealed. Consumer involvement theory provides a new theoretical approach for brand extension reaearchers. In resent years field cognitive style has been used in marketing or consumer decision- making researches increasely, but not in the area of brand extension evaluation.Past research on evaluation of brand extension had come to a conclusion that it must be ?fit? between parent products and extension products. Based on this conclusion and reviewing previous researches, this study attempted to find out the roles cognitive style and involvement level playing in the evaluation of brand extension by psychology experiments and marketing scale, such as G roup Embedded Figure Test, variant of Extrinsic Affective Simon Task, Revised Personal involvement Inventory etc. It was found that, firstly, consumers‘ evaluations to products in different extended paths were different because of their different cognitive styles. Secondly, for field- independent or field-dependent, their cognitive styles were stable psychological characteristics, and the tendency won‘t change with outside suggestions. Thirdly, after the group of field-neutral undergoing different kinds of s uggestion, their cognitive styles changed——ones become similar to field- independent if they had experienced suggestion of independent,the others become similar to field-dependent after the suggestion of dependent. This research paid attention to consumers‘ cognitive style which was a meaningful addition to the researches about factors of evaluation of brand extension. The findings of the study provided useful implications to marketers who were managing to advertise extension products.