New brands diluting the personality of existing brands

초록

Marketing literature emphasizes the threats copycats pose to market leading brands and demonstrates that copycats that are more identical to the leader brand are evaluated more positively. This research examines whether a new brand with varying degrees of brand element similarity changes consumer perception of the personality of an existing brand. The associative network theory is used to explain how a new brand affects an existing brand. A total of 160 participants were randomly assigned to the condition of a 2(similarity: high, low) x 2(familiarity: high, low) between-subject design and completed questionnaires. When consumers are unfamiliar with a senior brand (that is, an existing pioneer brand in a specific product category), a junior brand (that is, a new entrant brand to the same product category) with similar brand elements reinforces personality of the senior brand, whereas a low-similarity junior brand dilutes them. When consumers are familiar with the senior brand, the emergence of a junior brand reinforces senior brand personality, regardless of whether the junior brand is similar or dissimilar to the senior brand. The dilution of senior brand personality attributed to the emergence of a dissimilar or unique new brand lowers consumers' attitude toward the senior brand and consequently decrease their purchase intention. Our findings contradict what is often brand management's gut reaction. The results indicate that when a new brand in the same product category enters the market with a differentiation strategy (that is, unique brand name and package design), the new brand can dilute the personality of an existing brand and affect consumer's subsequent behaviors. Also, the results suggest that marketing effort to increase consumers' familiarity with brands is critical to the first comer brands.

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