The role of cultural values in evaluating brand extensions : individualism versus collectivism

Abstract

When launching brand extension strategies globally, It is very important for today’s brand marketers to understand the differences in those countries with high cultural diversity such as South Africa,. This research intends to investigate the role that a consumer’s cultural value plays in evaluating brand extensions, in the context of the cultural dimension of individualismcollectivism, in order to close the theoretical gap in this area.This research is quantitative and causal in nature, and used an experimental factorial design in the conduct of the research. Triandis’ scales were used in the questionnaire design, and 161 MBA students participated in the experiment at GIBS. The research results disprove that cultural values play a role in evaluating brand extensions, and there was insufficient evidence to prove that individualists differ from collectivists in evaluating brand extensions. Nevertheless, the research results found that there are some positive interaction effects between the product category relatedness and product involvement in the process of brand extension evaluations.