Brand Extension Under Internet Environment: An Exploratory Research On E-portals

Brand extension has attracted lots of attention in recent 20 years. The scope of the researches has enlarged from FMCG brands to experiential brands, and service brands even e-service brands, but little attention was paid to the factors influencing the e-brand extension or brand extension under the internet environment. With the development of information technology, the internet enters into a new era, in which the users needs are diversified and the competition between companies are tense, more and more IT companies adopt the diversification strategy including the brand extension tactics.Due to the practical situation in IT industry and the academic situation in brand extension field, the aims of this study were to verify the feasibility of the classical research framework in the online context, explore the impact of exclusive factor derived from the channel and that of consumer personality such as consumer innovativeness and subjective norm on brand extension. E-portals were chosen as the objective, and finally, Baidu was chosen as the brand, and the MP3 search as the close extension, Baidu space as the moderate extension, Baidu YouA as the far extension. 303 questionnaires were collected to test hypothesizes. With rigorous analysis, conclusions were found:(1) brand image and perceived fit played positive roles in brand extension as in the traditional channel, (2) perceived tie had positive impacts on brand extension, furthermore, the relationship between brand image and extension evaluation was partially mediated by perceived fit and perceived tie, (3) personality showed certain influence to brand extension, the effects of consumer innovativeness were weak and further study was necessary, while the effect of subjective norm was significant.