Determining the Effect of Brand Extension Strategies on Consumer Attitudes to New Products in the Sports Apparel Market

Developing and introducing new products to the market is one of the costliest strategies of a company with a high failure rate. One way of naming new products is brand extension. Brand extension brings instant fame for the new product and persuades people accept it faster. The aim of this research is to determine the effect of brand extension strategies on consumer attitudes of new products in the apparel market. The statistical population of the research includes students of physical education at The University of Isfahan and Khorasgan Azad University. The appropriate brands and products for the research where selected using two pre-tests. The tests were subsequently conducted on two brands and two products. The consumer’s initial brand image (prior to brand extension) was considered as the independent variable, image fit and similarity between products the intermediate variables, and the costumer’s attitude to the new product the dependent variable. Data collection was done using a questionnaire and samples were chosen at random. Furthermore, SPSS and Amos software programs were for data analysis and hypotheses testing. The results of the survey indicate that the consumer’s attitude to the new product is influenced by their attitude prior to brand extension, perceived fit of the new product and the brand, and similarity between the new product category and the brand’s other products. Furthermore, the effect of consumer’s innovativeness as a moderator in the relationship between image fit and category similarity of the new product on consumer’s attitude to the new product was not proven.