The Effect Of Product Attribute Consistency On Time-honored Brand’s Extension Evaluation

Time-honored brand is the treasure of Chinese traditional culture,and it also has important historical value and commercial value.In the early days of the founding of the People’s Republic of China,time-honored enterprises were prosperous,with about 10,000 time-honored brands.These time-honored brands have experienced the baptism of years and have profound traditional culture,and they are the national brands that Chinese people are proud of.However,with the change of The Times,under the impact of market economy and reform and opening up,more and more old brands fade out of people’s view,and the few remaining old brands also face many development difficulties,so the revitalization and development of old brands in the new era is particularly important.Time-honored brands usually have very rich brand assets,and can use the brand extension to borrow the original brand advantages to launch new products,so as to achieve the purpose of revitalizing the brand.In the existing researches on brand extension,scholars mainly started from the combination of product and brand and discussed the influencing factors of extension evaluation.However,perceived fit is a very abstract concept,including product attributes,product categories,brand image,brand concept and other aspects of the fit.Among them,the consistency of product attributes can arouse consumers’ nostalgia feelings and memories,which is especially important for the extension of time-honored brands.Based on the brand extension of time-honored brands,this study starts from the perspective of product attribute consistency,explores the influence of the consistency of functional attribute and hedonic attribute on the evaluation of time-honored brand extension,and examines the role of perceived self-continuity and nostalgia tendency.The research results have three practical significance for guiding the development of time-honored brands:(1)It is helpful to guide time-honored brands to choose appropriate brand extension strategies and take into account the inheritance and innovation of product attributes.(2)It is helpful to guide time-honored brands to formulate correct marketing communication strategies in the extension practice and achieve the best promotion effect.(3)It is helpful to inspire time-honored brands to carry out market segmentation according to consumers’ nostalgic traits and develop differentiated brand extension strategies and communication strategies.In this paper,the method of scenario simulation experiment was used to study,and the related variables of the virtual brand extension situation control were designed to observe the evaluation of the brand extension under the consistency of different product attributes.Based on the analysis of the results of the two situational simulation experiments,the following conclusions can be drawn:(1)The consistency of product attributes between the extended product and the parent brand has significant positive effects on the evaluation of brand extension.Compared with extended products with low consistency of functional(hedonic)attributes,consumers have higher evaluation of extended products with high consistency of functional(hedonic)attributes.(2)The consistency of product attributes between extended products and parent brands has significant positive effects on perceived self-continuity.Compared with extended products with low consistency of functional(hedonic)attributes,extended products with high consistency of functional(hedonic)attributes have higher self-perception continuity.(3)Perceived self-continuity plays a partial intermediary role in the relationship between the consistency of functional attributes and the extension of time-honored brands,as well as the relationship between the consistency of hedonic attributes and the extension of time-honored brands.(4)Consumer nostalgia tendency plays a positive regulating role in the relationship between product attribute consistency and the extension of old brand.The stronger the consumer’s nostalgia tendency is,the greater the influence of product attribute consistency on the extension evaluation of old brand.This paper has the following three innovations:(1)Based on the concept of conformity in previous brand extension studies,it further focuses on the consistency of product attribute dimensions and enriches the connotation of the concept of conformity in previous studies.(2)Extend relevant theories in the field of autobiographical memory to the study of time-honored brands,and expand the theoretical basis of brand extension research.(3)Consumer nostalgia tendency is introduced as a moderating variable to clarify the functional boundary of relevant theories.To some extent,this paper has expanded the previous studies,but there are still four deficiencies:(1)In the selection of time-honored brands,this study only chose four brands for experiment,which has certain limitations.(2)The extended products designed in this study are all virtual,but the difference between the simulated experiment and the real market situation may reduce the validity of the experimental results.(3)As for the dimension division of product attributes,the concept of functional attributes and hedonic attributes is still somewhat abstract,and the connotation of product attributes needs to be further divided.(4)This study does not consider the consistency of brand and cultural dimensions,which has certain limitations.