Brand Extension Fit And Tourist Inspiration: The Moderation Effects Of Brand Familiarity And Implicit Beliefs

Brand extension (BE) refers to the use of an established brand name to introduce products to a new product category. This strategy has been employed by multinational brands to attract tourists when they travel to an unfamiliar destination. The existing literature predominantly indicates that a higher taxonomic and thematic fit between the parent brand’s and BE’s product category can affect the BE success. Taxonomic fit refers to the BE being introduced within the same membership of a common product category whereas thematic fit is about the BE providing different functional usage in the same consumption scenario. However, a high fit BE does not guarantee success in the tourism industry. For example, EasyJet has withdrawn its EasyCar extension, a car rental service, albeit having a high taxonomic fit. This may be due to the BE being unable to create the inspiration feeling that tourists seek during their travel. Adopting the dual-processing and consumer inspiration models, the current research investigates how a taxonomic fit and thematic fit affect tourist inspiration and subsequently their BE adoption intention. A scenario-based experiment (457 US participants) revealed that tourists’ adoption of a BE product is determined by discovering their inspired feelings about the level of BE fit (high/low Taxonomic*Thematic). The combination of a low taxonomic and high thematic fit BE can elicit the highest tourist inspiration, which leads to the BE adoption intention. Such an effect can be positively moderated by a high familiarity with the parent brand. Moreover, the implicit belief, particularly entity (rather than incremental) belief, can positively strengthen the effect further. The findings advance the literature by uncovering the new role of tourist inspiration on BE in tourism marketing.