Brand Specific Associations and Consumer Involvement in the Evaluation of Brand Extensions

Research in the area of brand extensions has focused on the themes of simple affect transfer and category based affect transfer to explain attitude towards the extension. Subsequent research stresses the importance of brand-specific associations in explaining attitude and shows that brand-specific associations moderate the effect of brand affect and category similarity in the evaluation of an extension. This study examines the moderating role of brand-specific associations on brand affect in the evaluation of an extension under conditions of high and low consumer involvement in the extension category. We find that brand affect remains an important variable in explaining attitude towards the extension even in the presence of relevant brand-specific associations in the extension. We find that involvement does not have a direct effect on the attitude towards the extension. However, it moderates the effect of brand specific associations on brand affect in the evaluation of the extension. High involved consumers in the extension category rely on the main effects of brand affect and relevance of association to form their attitude towards the extension, while the low involved consumers perceive the interaction between brand affect and relevance of association in forming their attitude. Thus, contrary to literature on involvement, results show that the process of evaluation of extensions is not different for low involved and high involved consumers. But consumers’ method of processing available information is different for varying levels of involvement.