An exploratory study of consumer expertise and perceived fit in brand-extensions

Brand extensions have been an important area of research dominated by the study of theprocess of fit perception between the core brand and the extension. To our knowledge, howvarying levels of consumer expertise with an extension affect extension evaluation are littleunderstood and has not been attempted in the literature before. Thus this study is an earlyexploratory step in investigating the lack of consensus in the literature about the role ofconsumer expertise in the brand extension evaluation process. Specifically, we investigatehow and why the level of consumer expertise determines the perceived fit between a parentbrand and an extension category. Exploratory interviews were conducted among users of MP3players who were presented with a hypothetical scenario of Intel launching MP3 players. Thefindings revealed that there were differences between how expert and novice users of MP3players perceived a proposed Intel extension decision. The experts welcomed the idea andsaw a 'fit' between Intel and MP3 players both at the brand-level and at the category-level.Novices on the other hand found the idea illogical and were unable to perceive a fit betweenthe parent brand and the extension. These findings emphasize the importance of treatingconsumer expertise as a segmentation variable while planning brand-extension decisions.