1. Develop a new brand especially chosen for your new product or service.
2. Apply your existing brand in some way (parent brand extension).
3. Combine your new brand with the existing one (parent sub-brand).
Each strategy has its good and bad points.
1. Developing a new brand offers the potential to create enormous equity in a unique image, but is expensive to do properly with no assurance of success.
2. Applying your existing brand can lower production costs, but weaken the original brand's market position by confusing your customer.
3. Combining new with old seems to offer the least risk, but could bring untold harm to your parent brand if the new brand fails.
Current research says
Parent brand extension only works if there is a ?close fit? eg if your parent brand is associated with ?Hot? then an extension for ?Cold? is unlikely to work.
A successful ?close fit? extension will contribute significantly to your parent brand and allow even further extension.
The most successful advertising strategy for your parent brand extension is the one that extols the virtues of the extension rather than focussing on the parent brand.
Where to from here?
Brand extension is a specialist area and not to be taken lightly.
The good news is, there are a myriad of books written on the subject including the one I highly recommend as the easiest to read, ?Strategic Brand Management - building, measuring, and managing brand equity? by Kevin Lane Keller ISBN'0-13-120115-8.
The Internet is primarily used to communicate, entertain, educate and research. It is thus no wonder that nonperishable, information-intensive products - including computers and software, books, travel, consumer electronics, magazine subscriptions - are the most popular online products at present. Content-rich sites, subscription-based sites to advertiser-supported sites focusing on a wide range of topics, have been sprouting all over the Internet.
Services such as hotel reservation, air travel and investments have successfully translated themselves to the Internet.
Unique services such as Online driving schools have been prospering. Some states in the US have set up online payment sites for Government services. Residents of a state can log on to a common site to pay all bills and other expenses, such as parking tickets to the local/County courts.
However, all kinds of services cannot be run entirely on the Internet. The Internet is less effective when face-to-face selling is needed to close a deal. The Internet can give lots of preliminary information that's useful in setting the scene for the closing. But the actual closing takes place offline - i.e., not on the Internet.
Products can also be marketed and sold successfully on the Internet. The kinds of products and services that sell best on the Internet are those that take advantage of the convenience of the Net. Remember that convenience is the primary reason why consumers flock to the Internet in the first place. People can shop any hour of the day at any site. They can avoid crowded stores, irritating sales clerks, and even avoid pickpockets.
Offbeat or unusual products and services often attract online attention and sell strongly. You would generally not try to sell items people can get at the corner store. Thus, few toothbrushes are sold on the Net; the same thing with daily food and beverage purchases. But special cheeses, rare cigars, Turkish plates, long-aged wines, even diamonds, can and do sell on the Net.
Most products sold by catalog and mail order also sell well on the Net. However, people tend to buy only those products that could be shipped at a reasonable price. Higher shipping costs diminish the price competitiveness of online products and turns-off a lot of potential buyers. In fact, high shipping costs is the primary factor that discourages people from buying online more than any other single reason. An Ernst and Young report shows that 53 percent of online shoppers are concerned with shipping costs that are too high, compared to only 19 percent who are concerned with credit cards being stolen.
As an online merchant, you have to work out the advantages as well as disadvantages of selling either products or services. However, in the recent past, online services have known to flourish. Nevertheless, if you chose to sell products you need to rethink your product offering if the total costs of the product and the shipping are higher than what is offered elsewhere.
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Carolyn R Morgan has sinced written about articles on various topics from Health, Kids and Teens and Gardening. Carolyn Morgan is a graphic designer, writer and illustrator who specialises in creating positioning and brand identity strategies for a wide range of businesses. To see examples of Carolyn's work, go to www.carolynmorgan.com.au. Carolyn R Morgan's top article generates over 3600 views. to your Favourites.
Gregg Hall has sinced written about articles on various topics from Lingerie, Desserts and Mortgage. Gregg Hall is a business consultant and author for many online and offline businesses and lives in Navarre Florida. Get at. Gregg Hall's top article generates over 3350000 views. to your Favourites.