Does Loving a Brand Mean Loving Its Products? the Role of Brand-Elicited Affect in Brand Extension Evaluations

Three studies examine the influence of brand-elicited affect on consumers' evaluations of brand extensions. When a brand spontaneously elicits affective reactions, consumers appear to form an initial impression of the brand's new extension based on these reactions. The affect that they experience for other reasons and attribute to the brand can influence this impression as well. Their later evaluations of the extension are then based on this impression. This is true regardless of the similarity between the extension and the core brand. These results contrast with evidence that affect influences brand extension evaluations through its mediating impact on perceptions of core-extension similarity. This latter influence occurs only when consumers are explicitly asked to estimate the extension's similarity to the core before they evaluate it.