International Strategies for Brand Extensions - Dissertation Example

As the world has crossed the threshold of the twenty-first century, the ways and means of doing business have transformed from the traditional ones that came under practice so far. Businesses and corporations have now shifted their core focus towards selling their products and services in the global marketplace. The products and services come under a certain name that becomes the brand name of the organization. This brand name becomes the source of identification for particular products and services (Healey, 2008, pp. 6-8).The inexact and true meaning, the term brand imitates and symbolizes the character, qualities, and behavior of the product or service of the organization in terms of its name, symbol or sign, design, combination, and so forth.

Brand alliance has also come under distinction and consideration with psychological aspects such as thoughts, feelings, perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and many others. People (consumers) associate with the brand on physiological terms after gaining experiences with the particular brand (Sahaf, 2008, pp. 277-278).When talking about the brand name, the origination of the brand name is significant to understand, as it plays an integral role at the time of determining the international strategies for brand extensions.

However, the concept of brand origin has come under the definition as "brand origin as the place, region, or country, where a brand is perceived among its target consumers" (Singh, 2010, pp. 35). Brand origin has come under forethought under the category of brand personality as a demographic characteristic, which is one of the aspects of brand image. This means that brands come under the description in terms of their origins, for instance, Foster as an Australian beer, Sony as Japanese TV, Toblerone as Swiss chocolate, and like that (Gelder, 2005, pp. 113-114). When the brands make up their strong position within the market and they are well accepted by the customers, the next strategic plan of the organizations is to extend their product category under the parent brand.

The new product category as an outcome of the brand extension can come under relation and similarity to the existing product categories and even can be different from the existing ones (MacInnis, Park, & Priester, 2009, pp. 247-248). Brand extensions help the firms to grow not only on a local and national level but also on the probability of getting an advantage on the worldwide level also boost. Nevertheless, brand extension is an overall process and strategy whereby the organizations extend their product category by introducing a new and different product to the brand name of the company's established brand (Sinclair, 2012, pp. 128-129).Extending the brand out of the existing product category can prove to be successful as well as can lead to the failure of the brand extension.

If the extended brand category fails to attract and allure the customers, it would leave a mammoth impact on the existing product categories of the brand. However, if the extended brand category becomes successful, the parent brand and other existing product categories would also have an advantage (Walsh, 2008, pp. 15-16).Brand loyalty is another factor that comes under consideration as a substantial variable that leaves a direct impact on the extension of the brand. This means that loyal customers to the parent brand are more likely to adopt and acknowledge the extended brand category of the parent brand.