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The research presented in this article addresses the issue of the significance and relative importance of the determinants of extension success by simultaneously investigating ten success factors. The empirical analysis considers the direct relationships between success factors and extension success, the structural relationships among investigated factors, and moderating effects. The authors find that fit between the parent brand and an extension product is the most important driver of brand extension success, followed by marketing support, parent-brand conviction, retailer acceptance, and parent-brand experience. The authors also find several important structural relationships among the investigated success factors (e.g., marketing support → fit → retailer acceptance → extension success). Finally, the interaction terms of fit with the quality of the parent brand and with parent-brand conviction are statistically significant, albeit of relatively low importance.

This article focuses on the measurement of the overall importance of brands for consumer decision making—that is, brand relevance in category, or BRiC—across multiple categories and countries. Although brand equity measures for specific brands have attracted a large body of literature, the questions of how important brands are within an entire product category and the extent to which BRiC differs across categories and countries have been neglected. The authors introduce the concept of BRiC (a category-level measure, not a brand-level measure). They develop a conceptual framework to measure BRiC and the drivers of BRiC, test the framework empirically with a sample of more than 5700 consumers, and show how the construct varies across 20 product categories and five countries (France, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States). The results suggest a high validity of the proposed BRiC measure and show substantial differences between categories and countries. A replication study two-and-a-half years later confirms the psychometric properties of the suggested scale and shows remarkable stability of the findings. The findings have important implications for the management of brand investments.

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Although substantial differences between product quality and service quality have spurred service research for the past 30 years, studies of brand extension success drivers in a services context measure the core driver of parent brand quality, using scales developed for fast moving consumer goods (FMCG). This study instead assesses parent brand quality with a context-specific measure, drawn from service quality research, and analyzes the relative effects of key brand extension success drivers for services. Partial least squares (PLS) modeling offers diagnostic information about the impact of three dimensions of perceived parent brand quality on the perceived service quality of an extension product, a key success metric for service brand extensions. In contrast with previous studies, the dominant success driver is parent brand quality rather than the perceived fit between the parent brand and the extension. Moreover, all three dimensions of parent brand quality constitute distinct drivers that should be considered when managers assess the chances of service brand extension success, with outcome quality having the strongest impact on service brand extension success. An importance performance analysis of the PLS estimates for 27 hypothetical service extensions demonstrates the diagnostic value of this approach and charts a ''priority map'' for managerial decisions.

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Illegal consumer file sharing of motion pictures is considered a major threat to the movie industry. Whereas industry advocates and some scholars postulate a cannibalistic effect on commercial forms of movie consumption, other researchers deny this effect, though sound evidence is lacking on both sides. Drawing on extant research and utility theory, the authors present hypotheses on the consequences and determinants of consumer file sharing and test them with data from a controlled longitudinal panel study of German consumers. The data contain information on the consumers' intentions toward and actual behavior in relation to the consumption of 25 new motion pictures, allowing the authors to study more than 10,000 individual file-sharing opportunities. The authors test the effect of file sharing on commercial movie consumption using a series of ReLogit regression analyses and apply partial least squares structural equation modeling to identify the determinants of consumer file sharing. They find evidence of substantial cannibalization of theater visits, DVD rentals, and DVD purchases responsible for annual revenue losses of $300 million in Germany. Five categories of file-sharing behavior drive file sharing and have a significant impact on how consumers obtain and watch illegal movie copies.

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