How Life-Role Transitions Shape Consumer Responses to Brand Extensions
研究发现，处于生活角色转变中的消费者对低或中等匹配度的品牌延伸态度更积极，原因是自我概念模糊引发辩证思维，提升了感知匹配度。
Life-role transition is a state wherein people pass through different life stages, involving changes in identities, roles, and responsibilities. Across six studies, the current research shows that consumers under life-role transition have more favorable attitudes toward distant (i.e., low- or moderate-fit) brand extensions than consumers who are not under life-role transition. The effect is driven by a sense of self-concept ambiguity associated with life-role transition, which subsequently prompts dialectical thinking that helps improve perceived fit between a parent brand and its extension, finally resulting in more favorable brand extension evaluation. This effect diminishes for (1) near (i.e., high-fit) brand extensions that do not require dialectical thinking for perceiving fit; (2) for sub-brand (vs. direct brand) architecture, for which there is less of a need to use dialectical thinking to reconcile the inconsistencies between a parent brand and its extension; and (3) when consumers perceive they have resources to cope with the life-role transition, which attenuates self-concept ambiguity. This research offers important theoretical and managerial insights by focusing on life-role transition—an important aspect of consumers’ lives that has been largely underresearched—and by demonstrating how and why it elicits more favorable attitudes toward brand extensions.