15. The role of brand naming in branding strategies: insights and opportunities

The branding strategy for a firm reflects the number and nature of common or distinctive brand elements applied to the different products sold by the firm. The often asked important questions include which brand elements can be applied to which products and what is the nature of new and existing brand elements that are to be applied to new products. One critical area that intersects several such brand elements is the research on brand extension. Past traditional research has revealed that successful brand extensions occur when the parent brand is seen as having favorable associations and there is a perception of fit between the parent brand and the extension product. There are many bases of fit: product-related attributes and benefits, as well as nonproduct-related attributes and benefits related to common usage situations or user types. In general, the findings point to the generalization that brand extensions are evaluated more favorably when perceived ‘fit’ is higher than when perceived fit is lower. Category similarity defined in terms of feature overlap is often used as the basis for fit judgments. For example, near extension categories that are physically similar to the parent brand category are evaluated more positively than far extension categories that are physically dissimilar to the parent brand category. A number of recent studies have explored situations in which the main effect of near extension being evaluated more favorably than far extensions can be significantly moderated. Park et al. (1991) showed that perceived fit can also be determined by brand concept consistency. In addition, Broniarczyk and Alba (1994) showed that perceived fit can be judged on the basis of a salient association that connects the parent brand to the extension.