Re-thinking brand extension theory: Parents, siblings and off-spring or landlords and tenants?

Abstract

Brand extensions strategies are aimed at extracting further value from an existing brand. The brand family metaphor, which has resonated with marketing scholars and practitioners for decades, has promulgated the use of analogies such as parents, siblings and off-spring to describe resulting brand-to-brand relationships. In this paper however, we question whether this metaphor and its analogical mappings, still hold relevance given we are in an ‘era of liquid modernity’ (Bauman, 2000) where notions of family may be less prescriptive. Through our analysis of interview data with practitioners who work on literary film adaptations, we found that the relationships among original and extended brands may be better conceptualised using an alternative metaphor: ‘brand for rent’. Our analysis revealed that in many contemporary brand-to-brand relationships, the relationship between the two brands is not solid, but rather fluid with a ‘distance’ between them; and the relationship contractual rather than familial. Our findings indicate that this alternative metaphor may have particular merit as marketplaces adapt to increasingly fluid contexts, where novel brand extension strategies and brand-to-brand relationships are emerging. We suggest further exploration of the metaphor and consideration of others, to further assist to theorise the diversity in contemporary brand extension practice.