To buy or not to buy? : how price-conscious store brand users respond to upward sub-branding

Sub-branding is a marketing strategy in which a firm markets a sub-brand under the overall umbrella of the main brand or company name to leverage its brand equity. It seems appealing particularly when most corporations got stuck in bottlenecks in the latest economic downturn (Aaker and Keller 1990). However, concerns have been raised about the possibility that in the process of attracting new consumers, the new sub-brand might disenfranchise current brand users (Quelch and Kenny 1994). For store brands, past studies have focused either on store brand users’ reaction to the store brand sub-branding or on the formation of price-conscious consumers’ proneness towards the store brand. No study has addressed the issues of price-consciousness and store brand sub-branding together. My study investigated how evaluation of the store brand sub-branding varies when consumers have different levels of price-consciousness. I found that under the comparison condition, the new sub-brand received less favorable responses from price-conscious consumers than from low price-conscious consumers, and the low price-conscious consumers rated the sub-brand higher under the comparison than rated it alone.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Advertising

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Liu, Xinyang

Contributors dc:contributor

• Vargas, Patrick T.

• Store Brand
• Sub-branding
• Price-consciousness
• Backfire

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2014 Xinyang Liu

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/50459

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/50459