The Role Of Conflict In Brand Association In Evaluating Brand Extensions

The brand extension is defined as the existing brand name applied to acompletely different extension products, thereby reducing the costs and risks of newproducts entering the market. The success of the brand extension can bring economicbenefits to the enterprise and brand value. Failed brand extension will not only causeshort-term economic losses, the long term, may lead to impaired brand image, branddilution, vague position and so on. Therefore, the brand extension research is boththeoretical and practical significance.There are many cases of failure in the practice of brand extension. In these failures,many of extension products are in conflict with the original brand association. Thisstudy focuses on the phenomenon. The study mainly uses the method of literature andempirical, and based on marketing, consumer behavior, psychology, statistics. In thisstudy, we summarize the research on brand extension, especially the brand association.And we use questionnaires, psychological scale, interviews and other methods tostudy.To facilitate the statement, we defined the products with conflict in uniqueassociation and non-unique association products. Through the research of Pepsi,Mercedes-Benz and Apple, evidences shows that the evaluation of products withconflict in unique association is lower than non-unique association products. Then weclassified the consumers according to perfectionism. In evaluating products withconflict in unique association, non-perfectionists, healthy perfectionists anddysfunctional perfectionists was no significant difference. All three types ofconsumers have a low evaluation of products with conflict in unique association. Insome cases, consumers have a low perception of products with conflict in uniqueassociation, but willing to buy. Companies launch such kind of products with conflictin unique association should be more carefully. In addition, research from a businessperspective and the consumer perspective, discusses the reason of launching theproducts with conflict in unique association...