Christopher Joiner

THE NEGATIVE IMPACT OF EXTENSIONS: CAN FLAGSHIP PRODUCTS BE DILUTED?

This article extends the scope of investigations into the potential risks of brand and line extension strategies. Here, the authors examine whether extensions can dilute beliefs associated with a s...

Consumer Evaluations of Corporate Brand Redeployments

There has been little attention paid to the management of corporate brand names as part of the merger and acquisition process. As an initial step towards developing a better understanding of this brand redeployment decision the authors consider the reactions of one important stakeholder group—consumers—to alternative strategies. Specifically, the authors discuss the importance of the corporate branding decision in the M&A process and present a typology of alternative redeployment strategies as well as an exploratory study examining reactions to different postmerger branding strategies. The authors find evidence that the brand equity related to corporate brands is often decreased as a result of M&A activities and that individuals react differently to mergers employing different redeployment strategies. These results emphasize the need for firms to evaluate the corporate branding component of M&A activities as part of the process of managing corporate brands and should generate interest and research in this managerially relevant area.

Category Attitude Measures: Exemplars as Inputs

The role of exemplars in formation of attitudes toward a category has, surprisingly, been ignored in prior consumer research. In the present research we seek to develop a better understanding of the relationship between category exemplars (e.g., the products in a brand category) and overall attitudes toward the category. Attitude measures that incorporate evaluations of individual branded products may be useful, both conceptually and practically, and can complement more traditional multi-attribute measures of attitude. Across 3 studies we present evidence that a composite index of attitudes toward category exemplars, weighted by exemplar typicality, is related to overall category attitudes, sometimes more strongly than a traditional multi-attribute index. We also demonstrate that elaboration upon the individual exemplars further strengthens the relationship between category attitudes and this composite index. Theoretical implications for attitude theory, as well as managerial implications, are discussed.