The Role of Implicit Theories and Communication Strategies in Brand Extension Evaluations

The purposes of this study are to examine whether consumers, who believe that traits are fixed (entity theorists), are more resistant toward a broader set of brand extensions than consumers who believe that traits are malleable (incremental theorists) and to investigate how the entity and incremental theorists respond to different types of communication used in delivering the advertisement’s message can influence attitude toward brand extensions. This study is an experimental research which is divided into one pilot study and three experiments. Data were collected by recruiting university students at Busan University of Foreign Studies, South Korea. Data were analyzed by reliability test, t-test and analysis of variance in SPSS 18.0. The results showed that incremental theorists are more likely to accept brand extensions than entity theorists under the circumstances where the degree of fit between a core brand and the extension is distant. The results also showed that an implicit theorist can be primed to make a better perception towards a brand extension. The results of this study theoretically imply the entity theorists who believe in fixed traits tend to orient individuals to focus on product extensions’ attributes and are less favorable to an extension which has low fit with parent brands. Additionally, it is not only category fit but also consumer personality traits and communication types have an impact on brand extension evaluations. It is possible that this research can be a model of marketing strategies for marketing managers working on extension products. It is very possible that a particular situation can activate even a chronic implicit theorist. Moreover, persuasive communication can be used to influence a consumer’s implicit theory disposition and their judgments of brand extensions so that companies or marketers have another technique to elevate the effectiveness of the message to meet their needs.