Brand Extensions versus Brand Birthing

Old Dogs Don't Notice New Tricks: Prior Knowledge Affects How Consumers Accept New Information

ScienceDaily (2008-02-16) -- Over time, consumers develop a set of cues that we then use to make inferences about products, such as "all French restaurants have great service" or "more expensive candles smell better." However, this set of predictable beliefs can make it difficult for us to learn and recognize other real, positive qualities that are indicated by the same cues, reveals a new study....
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The article above points to an interesting problem with brands and brand extensions. Often the accumated memories / brand experiences make it difficult for new advertising and products to change the experience that consumers expect, and consequently, enjoy.

Shouldn't we expect more literature and growth in the area of how endorsed brands can be used to give birth to new brands, in situations where paradigm changing products or services are developed that would best prosper if unconstrained by the "baggage" of the well-known brand?

The growing role of psychology in marketing research

This chart -- "the emotional filter model", from Erik Du Plessis' book The Advertised Mind, shows the interaction between experience & advertising in creating brand memories. The chart accurately weighs the factors leading to the creation and retention of brand memories in the mind -- displaying the role of advertising in the process.

At the bottom of the chart, it displays how research has generally fit into the process of monitoring advertising & brand campaigns. Recent marketing research products have started to expand from this position, and place greater emphasis on the everyday experiences with products -- quality research, loyalty research, likelihood to recommend scores, etc..

With the recent advancements in, and popularization of, cognitive and evolutionary psychology, how should we expect marketing research to evolve as a discipline? Will the popularity of anthropological/ethnographical techniques and surveys of the 1990's be supplanted with an emphasis on psychology going forward? And if it does, will the nature of market research change from a focus on interaction between consumers and specific products, to how consumers react to product stimuli in general?


More about the book The Advertised Mind may be found here:

http://www.millwardbrown.com/theadvertisedmind/about.html