When Poor Brand Extensions Result in Favorable Brand Evaluations

We propose that brand-evaluation becomes an important component of self-evaluation for consumers who have high self-brand connections (SBC). Consequently, they maintain favorable brand evaluation even when the brand fails, in order to maintain a positive self-evaluation. In our studies, participants were informed that a brand has launched a brand extension that has performed poorly. We find that high (vs. low) SBC participants consistently evaluate the brand favorably (studies 1-4) although they were more adversely affected by the negative brand extension (study 3) and they experienced more negative emotions (study 4). These effects were attenuated after participants complete an unrelated self affirmation task, thereby reducing the need to self-affirm (studies 2-4).

Citation:

Shirley Y. Y. Cheng, Tiffany Barnett White, and Lan Nguyen Chaplin (2009) ,"When Poor Brand Extensions Result in Favorable Brand Evaluations", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 36, eds. Ann L. McGill and Sharon Shavitt, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 45-48.