PRODUCT FIT AND CONSUMER ATTITUDE TOWARD BRAND EXTENSIONS: THE MODERATING ROLE OF PRODUCT INVOLVEMENT

It is proposed that product involvement provides a situational motivation for consumers to discount the importance of product fit in brand extension evaluations. An experimental study with multiple brand extensions was conducted to test this hypothesis. It is found that the hypothesis holds in the case of complementarity between parent brand and extension product. A personality variable, need for cognition (NFC) is further applied to test the underlying principle and results support the argument.