Today, it is widely accepted among managers and scholars that brands are valuable intangible assets of a firm that can significantly contribute to its performance and financial value (Bahadir, Bharadwaj, and Srivastava 2008; Morgan and Lego 2009). To capitalize on the value of existing brands, the burgeoning brand extension research has provided valuable managerial insights into how an existing brand can be extended to different product categories such as Heinz cheese cracker (Keller and Aaker 1992) or Frito Lay's partially baked pizza (Oakley et al. 2007). However, brand extensions have been considered as a double-edged sword. While successful brand extensions provide new sources of revenue and enhance brand equity, failed extensions damage family brands, squandering millions of dollars in building the family brands' equity (Keller and Sood 2003). To take advantage of a positive spillover from a family brand and at the same time to avoid the family brand being diluted from a possible failed extension, some firms opt for a sub-branding strategy, which is a combination of the family brand name and a new brand name such as Courtyard by Marriott (Kirmani, Sood, and Bridges 1999). Despite the noted importance of sub-branding, there is little empirical evidence to guide managers' sub-branding decisions. Even though marketing literature is replete with findings supporting the transfer of affect from a brand to its extensions (Keller and Aaker 1992, 1993), the direct empirical evidence on the occurrence of affect transfer from a family brand to its sub-brand has rarely been documented (see Milberg et al. 1997 for a rare exception).
展开▼
