Evaluation On Brand Extension Based On The Consumers' Individual Differences

As a strategy of management, brand extension was widely used at the beginning of the 20 century. However, as a theory of strategy it was attached importance by International business management after 1980s, and until middle period in the 1990 it was spread to china. So far as today, the research on strategy of brand extension is on the initial stage in china and it was uncertain about concept, strategy of implementation, the attention points of implementation and so on. Therefore, Comprehensive and systematic study is urgently needed. The research on brand extension in other countries took focus on theory construction of brand extension, exploration of models and analysis on Influencing factors. The theories that are more mature are including classification theory and generalization theory. The Recognized model contains Affect-transfer Model and Association-demand Model. Concerning the factors of evaluation of brand extension, researches were conducted in terms of perceived fit of parent brand and extension brand, Perceived quality, brand imagination. Although the factors such as emotion, brand knowledge of consumer were considered, the influence of evaluation of brand extension from consumers should be concerned.Based on what we found, we planned three experiments to discuss whether different involvement levels, construal levels and different cognitive styles influent the evaluation of brand extension in order to search for mental model of different consumers when evaluating brand extension, so that we could help Business to make Market segments, providing proof for the development of appropriate model of brand extension and richening the study of the brand extension. The results were as followed:1 Perceived fit and brand styles had significant main effect.2 Consumers with high-level construals will place more weight on brand type in evaluating brand extensions compared to consumers with low-level construals and place less weight on perceived extension fit in evaluating brand extensions; However, both the low involvement subjects and high involvement subjects all place more weight on perceived extension fit in evaluating brand extensions, brand type only contribute to those high-involvement subjects; Compared to those field– dependence group, the field-independent group will place more weight on brand type in evaluating brand extensions and less perceived extension fit.