Unravelling the secret of successful brand extensions: a case study to explore consumer response

In this paper we try to disentangle the design of successful brand extensions and test this with two case studies. Earlier research revealed that typicality and novelty are related to the aesthetic preference of products. Despite the fact these two predictors are also each other’s suppressors, the equilibrium of both will determine aesthetically preferred products. When dealing with brand extensions we assume this effect is even bigger. We discern two approaches to explain this process. On the one hand the new product category with respect to the known brand can be seen as the novel experience of the design. On the other hand, the consumer can be familiar with the archetypical forms of a product category (typicality) and consider the branded product design as the novel experience. The outcomes show that typicality and novelty are jointly effective in explaining the aesthetic preferences of consumers for some product categories and that the appreciation of novelty for less typical designs is reinforced by the context they are presented in.