Extension Products Under a Brand Name Dilutes

¶ … extension products under a brand name dilutes not only the identity of the brand itself, but also of the flagship product of the brand. To determine whether flagship products are diluted by the introduction of an extension, the authors studied situations in which a well-known brand introduced a product inconsistent in at least one way with the brand's image, and then measured whether the flagship product's image was also affected.

They proposed the hypothesis that consumer beliefs about flagship products are stronger and more resistant to change than consumer beliefs about brand names, and therefore the introduction of an inconsistent extension product would be less likely to impact the flagship product's image than the brand's image. After an examination of three studies about Johnson & Johnson, the authors' hypothesis was confirmed except in the case of inconsistent extensions of the flagship product's line. There were several key concepts in this article.

The four concepts most central to the study were consumer belief, extension, flagship product, and dilution. Consumer belief includes the associations most strongly made by consumers about a brand or a product. In the authors' examination of Johnson & Johnson, one of the most widely-held consumer beliefs about the brand was "gentleness." Because it is one of the strongest consumer beliefs about Johnson & Johnson, the researchers determined that it would be the best assumption to test with an extension inconsistent with the brand's image.

An extension is a broadening of a brand into a new product, within or without its genre. The researchers introduced a hypothetical Johnson & Johnson product rated low for gentleness, and then tested the sample group's subsequent beliefs about the brand. As they suspected, the brand image had suffered from dilution, or the weakening of previously held beliefs about the brand. However, beliefs about the Johnson & Johnson flagship product, baby shampoo, had not been diluted by the low gentleness rating of the new product.

The concept of flagship product is important to understand in the context of this study. In the article, a flagship product is defined as the product that consumers associate most with a parent brand, in this instance Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo. In each of the three studies performed by the authors, Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo proved resilient to a change in costumer beliefs about it, while the parent brand was diluted in each instance.

The flagship product, however, seemed to be the only product in the brand that enjoyed this immunity to dilution. Other products, especially extensions of the baby shampoo line, did suffer dilution as a result of the inconsistencies. I thought the findings were very interesting, though not altogether surprising.

It makes sense to me that the introduction of a new product that is inconsistent with the parent brand's previous image would lead to a dilution of beliefs about the parent brand, but would not lead to a change in beliefs about the flagship product.

The flagship product in most cases has reached such a level of familiarity with consumers, either through use or through marketing, that the consumer beliefs about that product are more strongly tied to the attributes of the product itself than its association with the parent brand. For instance, if the Kleenex brand should suddenly introduce a steel wool product, it would not cause me to question the softness of Kleenex tissue, but it might weaken my association of the Kleenex parent brand with the concept of softness.

It did somewhat surprise me that other individual products under the parent brand suffer dilution when an inconsistent extension is introduced. I suppose if those products are not familiar enough to the general public for consumer belief to be built on the attributes of the products themselves, then consumer belief about them must be built on belief about the parent brand. If that is the case, then any dilution of the parent brand's image must also result in a dilution of the individual product's image.

This study has a great deal of relevance to the current market, especially in the technology sector where brands are rapidly introducing new concepts and products. For instance, the image of the Google brand.