The Broader Boundaries: The Importance of Service-Specific Associations in Service Brand Extensions

The idea that successful brand extensions require a high similarity between the brand and the extension category pervades current research. In two experiments we document that service brands can extend as successfully to low and high similarity service categories thanks to service-specific associations. In the first experiment we keep the extension category constant and show that similarity drives evaluations for product-to-service extensions but not for service-to-service extensions. In the second experiment we keep the parent brand constant and show that similarity drives evaluations for service-to-product extensions but not for service-to-service extensions, however only for participants taking enough processing time.