Effects Of Brand Concept,extension Strategy And Advertising Appeals On Brand Extension Evaluation

Brand extension is a common way to introduce new products adopted by most of enterprises,yet the success rate of brand extension is not that high.The failure of brand extension could result in the waste of firm resources even the negative consequences towards the image of the parent brand,therefore,it is necessary to investigate the factors that will impact consumers' brand extension evaluation and purchase intention as well as the effect mechanism.Based on the dual-process model indicated by research in consumer psychology,which has proved taxonomic and thematic similarities independently contribute to consumers' evaluations of brand extensions,our research examined the synergetic effect of brand concept(functional vs.symbolic),extension strategy(taxonomic vs.thematic)and advertising appeals(informational vs.emotional)on brand extension evaluation and purchase intention through two experiments.The results,which was concluded though data analysis by statistical software SPSS 24.0,revealed that taxonomic extensions had more favorable evaluation and higher purchase intention than thematic extensions for functional rather than symbolic brands(study 1).The further study found that,thematic extensions of functional brands had more favorable evaluation and higher purchase intention in the case of informational appeals versus emotional appeals,taxonomic extensions of functional brands had equal evaluation and purchase intention in two advertising appeals;while thematic extensions of symbolic brands had more positive assessment and higher purchase intention using emotional appeals versus informational appeals,but taxonomic extensions of symbolic brands had no difference in evaluation and purchase intention in whichever advertising appeals(study 2).The present research enriched the studies in the field of brand extension from the perspective of the joint effects of brand,extension strategy and advertising,the results provided the enterprises and managers with theoretical directions to execute a dual extension strategy,which had some practical significance.