摘要
依附成熟品牌开发新产品可减少失败的风险并带来可观的收益。但如若品牌延伸失败,则不仅无法为延伸产品带来附加价值,而且可能伤害母品牌形象及品牌资产。奢侈品牌已开始将其触角延伸至酒店业,为避免决策失误,有必要对奢侈品在酒店业品牌延伸中的消费者评价进行研究。该研究采用实验研究法,依据2个自变量:高/低品牌概念一致性场景和母品牌拥有者/非拥有者将消费者分为4组实验组和2组对照组,通过对参与实验的对象进行问卷调查,研究和分析不同组间消费者对延伸产品评价及延伸后对母品牌态度评价的评分差异。研究结果显示,母品牌拥有者中,消费者对此2个维度的评价均在高品牌概念一致性场景下高于低品牌概念一致性场景;而在非母品牌拥有者中则相反。
Developing new product by using existing mature brand is a favorable way to avoid the risk of failure and achieve considerable benefits.This is in contrast to the unsuccessful brand extension which will not be able to add value to the extended product and may even damage the parent brand image and the brand equity.Luxury brands have begun to extend to the hotel industry.To avoid incorrect decisions,it is necessary to understand how consumers evaluate this phenomenon.However,existing research on the brand extension from the luxury brand to the hotel industry is scant,and the majority of studies on the brand extension evaluation rely upon the perceived fit as a single variable while very few adopt the consumers' own attributes(such as the parent brand owner and the nonowner) as variables.Based on the practical and theoretical background,this research examines the consumer evaluation of the luxury brand's extension to the hotel industry and the feedback effect on its parent brand by using both the perceived fit and the parent brand owner/non-owner as independent variables.By using the experimental research method,this research set four experimental groups and two control groups by two independent variables: high/low brand concept consistency scenes and parent brand owner/non-owner.Through a questionnaire survey,this research explores how the different consumers give different evaluations to the extended product and their attitude towards the parent brand.The research shows that,first,the impact of the brand concept consistency on the extension evaluation differs from the parent brand owners to non-owners.For the parent brand owners,they react more positively in high brand concept consistency while for non-owners the situation is the opposite.Second,after contacting the extended product information,the consumers' attitudes towards the parent brand change significantly.The parent brand owners' attitudes towards the parent brand have a negative change,especially under the scenario of the low brand concept consistency.On the contrary,the non-parent brand owners' attitudes towards the parent brand demonstrate a positive change,and this positive attitude is more significant under the condition of low brand consistency.These conclusions have certain directive significance for the luxury brands' extension to the hotel industry.There are some limitations in this study.First,the sample size is relatively small.Second,the experiment design is not flawless.The study uses the different control group and experimental group samples to test the consumers' attitudes towards the parent brand.However,using the same consumer group to test their attitudes towards the parent brand before and after the exposure of the brand extension information can aid in avoiding the impact of the sample's own cognitive differences on the results of the experiment.Further study can analyze the effects of demographics and the impact of foreign educational experience on the experiment results.The variable of the parent brand owner/nonowner can be further divided into the following four dimensions: "not purchased and not owned","owned"," purchased " and " purchased and owned" which will be more practical for the brand in terms of carrying out market segmentation and strategic planning.
引文
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