Brand Licensing : Once you pop you can’t stop: When brand licensing goes too far

Sammanfattning: Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate consumer’s attitude towards licensed products in relation to the parent brand, with respect to perceived quality, likelihood to buy and associations’ transferability. Background: Brand licensing has become one of an increasingly popular ways of stretching a brand into new product categories to reach more consumers in new markets. Despite the fact that brand licensing is less risky than building a brand from scratch, the odds that licensed products will fail are still high. That is why, it is interesting to investigate consumers’ attitudes towards brand licensing in fast moving consumer goods sector and see how perceived quality, likelihood to buy and transferability of parent brand associations will impact the licensing strategy. Method: The authors will use quantitative approach; data will be gathered using self-administered questionnaires. Furthermore, the data will be analysed using SPSS, namely by employing Spearman’s correlation. Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that perceived quality, likelihood to buy and associations of the parent brand have a positive impact on the licensed products only if there is a high degree of perceived fit between the two product categories. Consumers welcome new licensed product that is in the related product category, however, the consumers appear to be sceptical to the product that is outside of the core market of the parent brand.