How advertising slogans can prime evaluations of brand extensions: further empirical results

A replication of Boush’s exploratory study provides further evidence about how advertising slogans prime evaluations of brand extensions. Two hypotheses are investigated. First, that a brand extension will be rated as more similar to existing family‐branded products if the advertising slogan primes attributes that the brand extension shares with existing products than if the slogan primes attributes that the brand extension does not share with the existing family‐branded products. Second, given a positively evaluated brand, a brand extension will be evaluated more positively if the advertising slogan primes features that the extension shares with existing family‐branded products than if the slogan primes attributes that the brand extension does not share with existing family‐branded products. The research shows priming can play an important role in supporting or undermining a brand extension strategy by drawing attention to attributes either that a new product has in common with existing products or that conflict with existing products.

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