BRAND EXTENSION Advantages & Disadvantages of Brand Extension. Brand Extension is a concept under Branding Strategy. When a firm uses an established Brand to introduce a new Product, it is called a Brand Extension. In a particular situation , when a Brand is combined with an existing brand, the Brand Extension is also termed as also"Sub-Brand", for example Amul Masti Dahi, Adobe Acrobat Software, Maruti Swift Automobile, and ICICI Prudential Life Insurance. An Existing Brand that gives start -off to a brand extension is referred to as the Parent- Brand. If the Parent Brand is already associated with Multiple Products through brand extensions, then it may also be called a Family Brand.. When a firm introduces a new Product, it has the following important choices: 1. The Firm can develop new brand elements for the new product. 2. The firm can apply some of its existing brand elements. 3. The Firm can use a combination of new and existing brand elements. Thus, before launching a New Product Firms/ Marketers/Researchers devise different branding strategies. These strategies involve deciding the Nature of New and Existing Brand Elements to be applied to new and existing Products. It can be said that a firm's branding strategy reflects the number and nature of common an d distinctive brand elements applied to the different Products sold by the firm. Brand Extensions are classified into two main categories : - 1. Line Extension and 2. Category Extension. In a Line extension , the parent brand is used to brand a new product which targets a new market segment within a product category being currently served by the parent brand, such as through new flavours , forms, colours, Added Ingredients, and Package sizes. For example, Life buoy Saop from Hindustan Unilever Limited has many Line Extensions. Each one of these extension is identified by specific names following the parent brand name such as Lifebuoy Active Orange, Lifebuoy International Plus and Lifebuoy International Gold. In a Category Extension , the parent brand is used to enter a different product category from that currently served by the parent brand, such as swiss Army Watches. Another Example is Honda. Honda has used its company Name to cover such different products as Automobiles,Motorcycles, Snow blowers, Lawnmovers,Marine Engines, and Snow Mobiles.Honda's Advertisement Slogan is Fairly Popular: "Six Hondas in a Two -Car Garage!". While choosing Brand Names to brand its new Products or new services, a firm generally keeps the following four strategies in mind or in perspective, 1> Individual Names, 2.> Blanket Family Names,3.> Seperate family names for all products and 4.> Corporate names combined with Individual Product Names. Advantages of Brand Extensions Generally,Brand Extensions have many advantages are more commonly realized by a firm. These are : 1>. Capacity for facilitating New-Product Acceptance, 2. Ability to Provide Positive Feedback to the Parent Brand and Company. Brand Extensions help in removing the difficulties and odds that are initially faced by new products. Brand extensions are accountable for New -Product Success. With a brand extension ,consumers can make inferences and form expectations as to the possible composition and performance of a new product. For example when Sony introduced a New Personal Computer tailored for Multi-Media applications,Vaio, Consumers might have felt more comfortable with its anticepated performance, because of their experience with other Sony Products. Brand Extensions may reduuce costs of the Introductory launch campaign for the New Product..In the Indian context, the media and the related communications costs are rising day by day.Brand Extensions can reduce such costs. They do so by way of allowing for packaging and labelling Efficiencies.Brand Extensions help in retaining consumers who need a change, because of boredom or other situations. they offer consumers a portfolio of brand variants within a product category. Because of such offers , consumers who need a change can switch to a different Product without having to leave the brand family .The benefit of a successful extension is that it may also serve as the basis of subsequent Extensions of the Brand. Disadvantages of Brand Extensions: Al Ries and Jack Trout in their book titled "Positioning: The Battle for your Mind" observed that Line extensions may cause the Brand name not to be strongly identified with any one Product.. They call it the "Line -extension trap". When Consumers no longer associate a brand with a specific product and start thinking less of the brand, Brand dilution takes Place.. To Illustrate the point , by linking its brand to mainstream food products such as mashed potatoes ,powered milk ,soups and beverages,cadbury ran the risk of loosing its more specific meaning as a chocolates and candy brand. Similarly Retailers also reject Many new Products and Brands, because they do not have the required display space for them. Marketing failures are less damaging than product failures. In Product failures , the Brand fundamentally fails to live up to its promise. When the brand extension is seen as similar to the parent brand Product failure dilutes Brand equity. An inescapable disadvantage to Brand Extensions is that by introducing a new product as a brand extension , the firm forgoes the chance to cerate a new brand with its own unique image and equity. Advantages of Brand Extensions are too many , but there are some Disadvantages as well. ************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------