Beyond Survival of the Fittest: The Influence of Consumers' Mindset on Brand Extension Evaluations

Abstract:     
Previous research has shown that consumers' evaluations of brand extensions depend on the perceived quality of the parent brand and the fit between the brand and the extension category. We propose that the relative importance of these two factors is malleable and depends on the mindset of the decision maker. At a theoretical level, we demonstrate how minor changes in the decision context alter consumers' mindset and systematically change consumers' brand extension evaluations. In particular, we show that promoting a concrete mindset shifts consumers' focus from the fit of the brand extension to the quality of the parent brand. Since most academic brand extension studies use a relatively abstract decision context, a substantive implication of our findings is that prior research may have underestimated the importance of parent brand quality by implicitly inducing a mindset that is more abstract than the natural mindset of a consumer in the marketplace.

Keywords: Branding, brand extensions, consumer mindsets, choice

JEL Classifications: D81, M31

Working Paper Series