Good Guys Don\u27t Always Finish Last: The Moderating Role of Brand Extension Fit on Product Evaluations Based on Corporate Ability (CA) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Associations

Termed corporate associations, consumer corporate brand perceptions influence evaluations of new products made by consumers. Corporate associations are conceptualized as falling within two categories (Brown and Dacin 1997): a corporation may develop a reputation for Corporate Ability (CA) by developing quality products or for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) through its corporate commitment to societal obligations. Past research suggests that product-related CA associations lead to more favorable product evaluations than CSR, which is a contextual association that is less product-related. However, past research has been limited to line extensions, which are evaluated in a piecemeal cognitive process. Unlike line extensions, evaluations of brand extensions include an intervening categorization process that determines consumers\u27 evaluative strategies. This research merges the corporate association and brand extension literature streams and, in four studies, contributes to the literature by establishing that brand extension fit moderates the influence of corporate associations on product evaluations. This finding is developed further by demonstrating that both individual differences (self-construal) and brand-related attributes moderate this interaction