This study primary explores the effects of mood on brand ...



Mood Awareness and Brand Extension

Short Abstract

This study explores the effects of mood on brand extension. A 2 (mood level: good vs. bad)*2 (mood awareness: motivational vs. backdrop)*2 (brand extension type: product similarity vs. brand concept similarity) experiment was designed to examined the hypotheses, and there were 160 respondents random assigned in the above conditions. The results show that in the backdrop mood (unconscious) situation, good mood leads to higher acceptance to brand extension than bad mood, and there is no difference between the acceptances of two modes of brand extension. In motivational mood (conscious) situation, mood will influence consumers’ attitude via biasing information process. The happy consumers prefer the brand concept similarity extension, while the bad mood consumers incline to accept the product characteristic similarity extension more.

Mood Awareness and Brand Extension

Extended Abstract

This study primary explored the effects of mood on brand extension. Previous research indicated that mood did influence consumers’ acceptance of brand extension (Kahn, 1995; Menon and Kahn, 1995). For example, consumers with positive mood may adopt more diverse brand extensions than consumers with negative mood (Barone, Miniard, and Romeo, 2000). In other words, the happy ones can accept the larger difference between extension brand and parent brand than the sad ones. In spite of rich evidence that show the influence of mood on brand extension, there was little research discussing the mechanism behind the influence process.

Furthermore, previous research about the relationship of mood and brand extension neglected the issue of the mode of brand extension. When firms execute brand extensions, there are at least two types of extension policy (Park, Mileberg, and Lowson, 1991); the first is to focus on the similarity of brand concepts or brand image, for example, Rolex watches extended to its bracelets series. The other is to emphasize on the similarity of product characteristics, such as Timex watches extended to its timekeepers. Therefore, the objective of this study is to discuss if mood has the same influence on these two types of brand extension and the mechanism behind the influence process.

Actually, mood influences consumers’ attitudes in a quite complicated way, and the purpose of this study is to probe that in various mood awareness (conscious and unconscious) and mood level (good mood and bad mood), the consumers’ acceptance and preference to brand extension may be different. There are two mood awareness condition should be discussed: motivational mood and backdrop mood (Luomala and Laaksonen, 2000). As to the motivational mood, people experience mood in a conscious way and can aware of the source of mood; this kind of mood may involve cognition process. As to the backdrop mood, people are just in good or bad mood without being aware of it.

Mood awareness is the critical factor that influences whether mood influence attitude directly or via cognition components (Xia, 2007). When consumers are under backdrop mood and doesn’t aware the source of mood, the mood can reflect to the attitude directly. It means good mood lead to more acceptance of brand extension, while bad mood lead less preference to the brand extension.

On the contrary, when the consumers are under motivational mood and can aware the sources of moods, the mood effect is indirect and involved cognition elements. It means in motivational mood, good mood leads to the heuristic thinking approach, and consumers will care more about the heuristic cues (Monroe, 2003; Suri and Monroe, 2003), for example, the brand image. On the contrary, bad mood leads to the systematic thinking style (Bless, Bohner, Schwarz, and Strack, 1990; Bless, Mackie, and Schwarz, 1992; Mackie and Worth, 1989; Sinclair, Mark, and Clore, 1994; Worth and Mackie, 1987), and the consumers will pay more attention to the attributes that related to the product itself (Xia, 2007).

When applying the above discussion to brand extension, it is suggested that in backdrop mood (unconscious situation), mood influences brand extension attitude directly; It leads to the hypothesis 1:

H1: When consumers in happy mood and can’t aware of it (backdrop mood), their preference and recall to brand extension will be higher than the bad mood one.

On the other hand, in motivational mood (conscious) situation, mood will influence consumers’ attitude via biasing information process. Good mood leads to pay attention to heuristic cues, for example, the brand image. Therefore, when facing brand extension, consumers prefer the brand concept similarity extension to the product characteristic similarity extension. It leads to the hypothesis 2:

H2: When consumer in a happy mood and can aware of it (motivational mood), their preference and recall to brand concept similarity extension will be higher than to product characteristic similarity extension.

On the contrary, bad mood leads to the systematic thinking style, and the consumers will pay more attention to the attributes that related to the product itself. Hence, bad mood consumers incline to accept the product characteristic similarity extension more. It leads to hypothesis 3:

H3: When consumer in a sad mood and can aware of it (motivational mood), their preference and recall to brand concept similarity extension will be lower than to product characteristic similarity extension.

A 2 (mood level: good vs. bad)*2 (mood awareness: motivational vs. backdrop)*2 (brand extension type: product similarity vs. brand concept similarity) experiment was designed to examined the hypotheses, and there were 160 respondents random assigned in one of the above conditions.

The result of this study can be discussed in two parts. First, in the backdrop mood (unconscious) situation, it is hypothesized mood influences attitude directly. The results supported H1, and show that good mood leads to higher acceptance to brand extension, while bad mood leads to lower preference to brand extension. In the backdrop mood, there is no difference between the acceptances of two modes of brand extension.

In motivational mood, it is hypothesized good mood leads to focus on brand image. The results also supported H2 and indicated that consumers prefer the brand concept similarity extension to the product characteristic similarity extension. Moreover, H3 was also supported by the results that indicated bad mood consumers prefer product characteristic similarity extension more, and relative to product characteristic similarity extension, they don’t like brand concept similarity extension.

Reference

Barone, M. J., Miniard, P. W., & Romeo, J. B. (2000). The influence of positive mood on brand extension evaluations. Journal of Consumer Research, 26 (3), 386-400.

Bless, H., Clore, G. L., Schwarz, N., Golisano, V., Rabe, C., & Wölk, M. (1996). Mood and the use of scripts: Does happy mood really lead to mindlessness? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 665-679.

Bless, H., Mackie, D. M., & Schwarz, N. (1992). Mood effects on attitude judgments: Independent effects of mood before and after message elaboration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 585-595.

Kahn, B. E. (1995). Consumer variety-seeking among goods and services: An integrative review. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2, 139-148.

Luomala, H., & Laaksonen, M. (2000). Contribution from mood research. Psychology & Marketing, 17 (3), 195-233.

Mackie, D. M., & Worth, L. T. (1989). Processing deficits and the mediation of positive affect in persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 27-40.

Menon, S., & Kahn, B. E. (1995). The impact of context on variety seeking in product choices. Journal of Consumer Research, 22, 275-295.

Monroe, K. B. (2003). Pricing: Making profitable decisions. IL: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Park, W., Mileberg, S., & R Lowson, R. (1991). Evaluation of brand extensions: The role of product feature similarity and brand concept consistency. Journal of Consumer Research, 18 (2), 185-193.

Sinclair, R. C., Mark, M. M., & Clore, G. L. (1994). Mood-related persuasion depends on (mis)attributions. Social Cognition, 12, 309-326.

Suri, R., & Monroe, K. B. (2003). The effects of time constraints on consumers’ judgments of prices and products. Journal of Consumer Research, 30, 92-104.

Xia, K. (2007). The Effects of Consumers’ Moods on Advertising Cognition and Product Attitude. The PhD Dissertation of Department of Business Administration, National Chengchi University.

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