Retail brand extension: antecedents of attitude and intention to buy

This study focuses on retail brand extension from the consumer perspective when non-traditional product/service categories are offered with the private label brand. The extension product category investigated is car fuel, offered through a retail branded fuel station. Most previous research into brand extension focused on manufacturer brands, while retail brand extension has been rarely examined in the literature and very little is known about customer perceptions and buying behavior when grocery retailers extend their brands in non-traditional businesses. 500 questionnaires were collected from a convenience sample of retail customers. Through Structural Equation Modeling, we propose a model in which the main antecedents identified by the relevant literature on brand extension – namely: conceptual fit (FIT), private label quality (PLQ), resources and capabilities (RC), trust towards the retailer (T) –impact on attitude towards the extension (ATE) and this in turn influences the intention to purchase the extended brand (INTB). We also included price consciousness (PC) and behavioral loyalty (BL) as antecedents of intention to purchase the extended category. The proposed model achieves good predictive validity and the proposed hypotheses are fully supported, apart from the negative impact exerted by Trust on Attitude. Scientific and managerial implications are discussed.