Abstract:
The ever changing market characteristics give huge impact on corporate decisions. Hence the companies constantly develop new marketing strategies to stay ahead in the market and reap more benefits for their stakeholders. In fact introduction of new product is necessary for any companies to stay ahead with competition. As a solu1ion companies adopt brand extension strategy for increasing sales of the new product lines. Brand extension is a strategy adopt by companies having strong and establish brand names, as a means to enter in new product categories or classes (Aaker and Keller, I 992).Brand extension is one of the attractive growth strategies and it is low cost, low risk way to penetrate different target segments by utilizing establishes brands. Brand extension is widely used because of the fact that strongly positioned brand could build and communicate brand value successfully. Then the customers are motivated to do trail purchasing and averse the risk of new product.
Brand extension strategy needs a careful analysis of the market before adopting, because it has both positive and negative consequences. Brand extension strategies tasted success in the past, still brand extension success is uncertain. Literature, showed a wider variety of determinants for consumer evaluation of brand extension. But there is no any empirical evidence under Sri Lankan context. Therefore this study was conducted to analyze how consumers evaluate brand extension in the Sri Lankan context. The specific objectives of this study are identifying the factors influence in consumer evaluation of brand extension and find out the association between above Factors with overall brand extension respectively. General objective is identifying the possible brand extensions for future success by incorporating CIC brand name.
