ABSTRACT
The branding strategy of a company involves decisions about all four issues: brand portfolio, brand span, brand extension, and brand architecture. This chapter presents an overview of the types of brands that can be distinguished in terms of basic categories. It discusses the related concepts of brand span and brand extension. It also discusses the spreading activation theory, which is relevant when trying to understand the effects of the size of the brand span on consumer choice. Based on Nielsen data on fast-moving consumer goods in the Dutch supermarkets over a nine-year period, SWOCC, the Netherlands-based institute for marketing research, analyzed 100 brand extensions of thirty-one leading food and non-food brands. Three groups of factors that determine the success of brand extensions were identified as market, company, and brand-related factors. Virgin has broken all the rules that have become common practice in the field of brand extensions and that have been discussed in the chapter.
