Transferring components of brand loyalty in a brand extension scenario within FMCG

Sammanfattning: Brand managers within FMCG are continuously looking to capitalize on strong brands to grow their business. Strategies involving brand extension activities have become increasingly popular, as it allows brand managers to build on already established consumer-brand relations to increase cross-selling. However, the area of brand extension and transferral of brand loyal consumer relation onto new products is surprisingly unexplored. This thesis aims to fill that research gap by investigating the transferability of brand loyalty components in different brand extension scenarios. This thesis investigates brand loyalty measures of relational, behavioural and attitudinal character in the context of purchase motivation, category fit and brand strength in two brand extension scenarios. First, in the event of the consumer's gateway to the brand being the original product, and secondly, in the event of the consumer's gateway being the extended product. A quantitative study was composed for two brands of different purchase motivation, based on the results from three pre-studies. The aim of the main survey was to replicate the real life relation a consumer has established to a brand family, in order to investigate to what degree that consumer's brand loyalty was transferred from the first product they tried onto the second product they tried. A total of 298 responses were collected. Results revealed that traditional brand loyalty components of behaviour and attitudinal character overall scores higher for a brand in comparison to relational components. Also brand loyalty components are transferred to a higher degree in a brand extension scenario of high category fit in comparison to a low category fit scenario. Finally, it has also been proven that brand loyalty is more easily transferred from a low strength product than from a high strength product onto the original product brand.