Brand relevance and the effects of product proliferation across product categories
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ORIGINAL EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
Brand relevance and the effects of product proliferation across product categories Yanhui Zhao 1 & Yufei Zhang 2 & Joyce (Feng) Wang 3 & Wyatt A. Schrock 4 & Roger J. Calantone 4 Received: 17 January 2019 / Accepted: 12 April 2020 # Academy of Marketing Science 2020
Abstract Product proliferation may not be an effective strategy for every brand in every product category. Rather, the success of product proliferation may be conditional on previously unconsidered differences across product categories. In particular, brand relevance in category (BRiC), which is closely associated with an array of category-level characteristics, offers a potentially influential contingency. We rely on a survey study (Study 1a) and a lab experiment (Study 1b) to examine individual consumer reactions to product proliferation. These studies show that product proliferation has a stronger impact on customer-based brand equity in high BRiC categories than in low BRiC categories. From a firm perspective, Study 2 explores the effect of product proliferation on brand sales performance using IRI scanner data; it indicates conversely that BRiC has an opposing moderating effect, such that product proliferation has a stronger impact on brand sales in low BRiC categories than in high BRiC categories. Together, these nuanced results have important implications for product line and brand management resource allocation decisions. Keywords Product proliferation . Brand relevance in category . Brand sales . Customer-based brand equity
Marketers frequently use a product proliferation strategy to satisfy increasingly heterogeneous consumer needs (Berman 2011; Burke 2005; Johnson and Sohi 2014; Sinapuelas et al. 2015). For example, supermarkets today carry 40,000 more Vikas Mittal served as Area Editor for this article * Yanhui Zhao [email protected] Yufei Zhang [email protected] Joyce (Feng) Wang [email protected] Wyatt A. Schrock [email protected] Roger J. Calantone [email protected] 1
College of Business Administration, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Mammel Hall 134M, 6708 Pine Street, Omaha, NE 68182, USA
2
Collat School of Business, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35233, USA
3
Bentley University, Waltham, MA 02452, USA
4
Eli Broad Graduate School of Business, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
stock-keeping units (SKUs) than they did in the 1990s (Market Watch 2017). A product proliferation strategy comprises strategic actions (e.g., product line extension, new product introductions) that firms use to increase product variety in a product category. Such strategies are particularly effective when they align unique offerings with varied and dynamic consumer needs (Kekre and Srinivasan 1990). Extant work suggests that product proliferation can deter competitive market entries, establish market dominance, and improve competitive advantage (Bayus and Putsis 1999; Connor 1981; Giachetti and Dagnino 2014; Jeong et al. 2017; Schmalensee 1978; Shankar 2006). Despite the pre
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