Consumer Evaluation of Brand Extensions of

Google Inc.

(Online Brands Extended to Offline Market) – An Analytical Study

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the

degree of

Master of Business Administration (MBA)

To

Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi

Guide: Submitted By:

Dr. Anu Nagpal Sanjeev Kumar

Associate professor 13919103911

GITARATTAN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS SCHOOL

Delhi – 110085

Batch (2011-2013)

CERTIFICATE

I, Sanjeev Kumar, Enrollment No. 13919103911 certify that the Project Report (MS-

202) entitled “Consumer Evaluation of Brand Extensions of Google Inc.” is done

by me and it is an authentic work carried out by me at Gitarattan International

Business School. The matter embodied in this project work has not been submitted

earlier for the award of any degree or diploma to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Signature of the Student

Date:

Certify that the Project Report (MS-202) entitled “Consumer Evaluation of Brand

Extensions of Google Inc.” done by Mr. Sanjeev Kumar, Enrollment No.

13919103911, is completed under my guidance.

Signature of the Guide

Date:

Dr. Anu Nagpal

Associate Professor

Gitarattan International Business

School, Delhi- 110085

Countersigned

Director/Project Coordinator

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Research Project Report is a venture that requires co-operation of many people. I wish

to place on record my gratitude to Dr. S. Chaturvedi, Director and Mr. Rajesh S.

Pyngavil, Program Coordinator, Gitarattan International Business School, New Delhi

for their continuous encouragement and advice which were of immense help to me.

I feel pleasure in taking this opportunity to express my sincere regards to my

supervisor Dr. Anu Nagpal, Associate Professor, Gitarattan International Business

School, New Delhi. Without her guidance, valuable suggestions, constructive

criticisms and encouragement throughout the course of the project would not have

been possible. I am also thankful to all teachers, non-teaching staff and all my friends

of the institute for their kind help.

Sanjeev Kumar

Enrollment No- 13919103911

ii

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Increasing competence within the marketplace has provoked that firms seek to go

beyond the boundaries of their actual businesses by offering products in totally new

markets. Companies attempt to reduce the risk associated with launching these new

products by using an existing brand name, which allows the companies to leverage

brand equity in the new product categories. Brand extension has become a popular

strategy not only within the limits of offline markets but, also in an online context to

the extent that numerous offline companies have extended their brands to online

markets. Nevertheless, a recent trend shows that the reverse is also possible, and

Internet brands can also benefit from entering in new offline product categories.

Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web

to deliver marketing messages to larger audience. Online advertising is a form of

promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web to deliver marketing messages

to attract targeted customers. Google Inc. is an American multinational corporation

that provides Internet-related products and services, including internet search,

Telecoms equipment and its application, cloud computing, software and advertising

technologies.

The project titled “Consumer Evaluation of Brand Extensions of Google Inc.”

focused on the factors affecting brand extension. The study examines whether online

brands can be successfully extended to offline product categories from a consumer

perspective. Specifically, this study develops an descriptive model of consumer

evaluation of brand extensions which combines variables previously studied in the

literature with other extracted from online branding and applies them to the research

context. Empirical survey data is analyzed through a regression analysis applied to

iii

online brand and their offline extensions to identify the most important factors

influencing consumer’s attitude toward the brand extensions. Before starting with the

actual conduct of the study, various research papers were reviewed so as to provide a

base for the study. For the purpose a sample of 100 respondents were taken. The data

was collected using a questionnaire as a primary data from Rohini, Delhi. The

secondary data for the study was taken from sources like journals, books, magazines

and websites. For the purpose of testing hypothesis the analysis was conducted with the

help of tools like Ms Excel and SPSS.

During the research and while collecting information there were certain hurdles like the

sample size was small, customers were uninterested, due to time constraint, etc. Future

research can be done by accessing a wider area of network for getting improved results.

As for the further possibilities for research in this area, rural area can be covered due to

lack of awareness in that geographical area.

From the analysis various findings were drawn, limitations were traced and suggestions

laid down. The main results indicate that the attitude towards the offline extensions

launched by online companies is determined by the degree of product similarity, the

transference of emotional associations with the parent brand to the new product, the

perceived similarity received by the extension and the extent to which the consumers

are involved with the new product category. As consequence of these findings, the

success of online brands going offline will depend on the capability of managers to

build a strong and positive brand personality and product quality with consumers as

well as implementing marketing activities which reinforce product similarity

perceptions and foster consumer involvement with the brand extension.

iv

CONTENTS

S No Topic Page No

1 Certificate i

2 Acknowledgement ii

3 Executive Summary iii

4 Contents v

5 List of Tables vi

6 List of Figures vii

7 List of Symbols viii

8 List of Abbreviations ix

9 Chapter-1: Introduction 1

10 Chapter-2: Literature Review 32

11 Chapter-3: Data Presentation & Analysis 55

12 Chapter-4: Summary and Conclusions 70

13 Chapter-5: Recommendations 76

14 Bibliography 79

15 Appendix 83

16 Annexure 89

v

LIST OF TABLES

Table No Title Page No

1 Top Ad sever vendors in 20089

2 World’s 10 largest mobile phone handset vendors11

3 Reliability Statistics26

4 Hypothesis and Factors31

5 Main Factors of Brand Extension Evaluation47

6 Percentage of Gender in Respondents57

7 Percentage Age Group58

8 Qualification of Respondents59

9 Percentage of Profession Respondents60

10 Correlations61

11 Variables63

12 Model Summary64

13 ANOVAa

65

14 Cofficientsa

66

15 Review of Hypotheses67

vi

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure No Title Page No

1 Timeline of Google Inc. 17

2 Brand Extension Attitude Model 46

3 Pie Chart of Percentage of Gender 57

4 Pie Chart of Percentage Age Group 58

5 Pie Chart of Qualified Respondents 59

6 Pie Chart of Profession Respondents 60

vii

LIST OF SYMBOLS

S No Symbol Nomenclature & Meaning

1 α Alpha

2 β Beta

3 @ At the rate

4 ε Standard error

5 ρ Significance Level

6 × Multiplication

viii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

S No Abbreviated Name

Full Name

1 Inc. Incorporation

2 SEM Search Engine Marketing

3 SEO Search Engine Optimization

4 SERP Search Engine Result Pages

5 PDA Personal Digital Assistant

6 OS Operating System

7 GPL General Public License

8 Q3 Quarter 3rd

9 FMCG Fast Moving Consumer Goods

10 BE Brand Extension

11 BT Brand Trust

12 CPM Cost Per Mille

13 CPV Cost Per Visitor

14 CPC Cost Per Click

15 PPC Pay per click

16 CPA Cost Per Acquisition

17 PPP Pay Per Performance

18 CPL Cost Per Lead

19 BA Brand Affect

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction

Increasingly competitive forces in the global markets are forcing companies to

differentiate themselves from competitors in order to survive and take advantage of

the current opportunities of growth. One way to differentiate from competitors is the

establishment of strong brands that allow companies to increase the efficiency of their

marketing expenses achieving thus benefits to the company such as a more favorable

perception of the products by the customers, greater loyalty, less vulnerability to

competitors marketing actions, high profits margins, less negative reactions by

consumers to price increases, higher support of middlemen, higher marketing

promotion effectiveness, increasing licensing and brand extensions opportunities. In

other words, while competitors can emulate financial and physical assets, intangible

assets, as brands, represent a more sustainable competitive advantage. The importance

of brands is not only measured in terms of the competitive advantages that they

provide in their present markets but also the future opportunities that they provide in

untapped markets. This way, firms can enter new markets by using an existing, well-

known brand name in order to reduce both the cost of launching new products and the

risk of product failure. The strategy behind the leverage of the company brand equity

to new markets, products or sectors is known as brand extension.

The acceptance of brand extension is principally due to the benefits that both

brand and extension provide. On the one hand, the product commercialized under a

well-known brand is more attractive to the consumers and suppliers, thus reducing the

marketing costs and increasing the chance of success. On the other hand, brand

extensions reinforce brand image and notoriety, which make consumers purchase

other products offered by the brand. All this allows an increase of the market share

and efficiency of market efforts. In other words, extensions benefit the companies

2

because they transfer intangible components of the brand such as brand awareness,

trust or other specific brand associations stored in the consumer’s minds to the new

products. For example, National Geographic has been able to extend successfully its

brand by transferring associations of nature, adventure and multiculturalism from

photography and documentaries to travel products, furniture or outdoors clothing.

Despite the positive effects of brand extensions, their inappropriate use may harm

the company's brand image if the new products do not fit with the consumers brand

associations. This does not mean that a high degree of similarity between the parent

brand product category and the new product has to be present; in fact, some

companies have stretched their brands to very dissimilar product classes. For instance,

Louis Vuitton successfully extended to luxury resorts although it is a different

business from fashion and ITC also successfully extended to the hotel, restaurants and

luxury cloths industry although these are very different business from tobacco.

The use of brand extensions as a strategy to achieve growth has drastically

increased in recent years. In fact, between 80 and 90% of new products are launched

under the name of an existing brand. Extensions also gone through the borders of the

offline markets to markets from the online domain. Consequently, companies have

stretched their brands within and towards the online markets. Traditionally based

offline companies, in addition to use the internet as an alternative distribution channel

or mean of running communication campaigns, have considered the online domain as

a valuable market to commercialize both their current products or services and their

extensions. For instance, Apple sells mobile applications and music on the internet

through its iTunes shop and Google sell their mobile application and games on the

internet through its Google Play apps. For offline brands, the expansion into the

online market increases the brand value for consumers by providing additional

3

availability and exposure through the internet. On the other hand, some online

businesses, such as Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft and eBay, have extended their

brands within the Internet limits, becoming some of the top 100 global brands.

Amazon, for instance, started to sell electronic goods and music online in addition to

books. It is also possible to extend online brands to offline markets. Following this

trend, Google has launched a new mobile phone which uses Google's mobile

operation system, Android. Besides, Amazon has extended its name to a new device,

Amazon Kindle, which enables consumers to read eBooks, newspapers and

magazines through an Internet connection. Microsoft Inc. also introduced Microsoft

Surface Tablet & windows phone and extended to offline market from online or

services. Therefore, offline markets enable Internet brands to enhance brand

awareness by making them more tangible for consumers, which may create stronger

trust and consequently higher brand loyalty. Furthermore, the adaptation of online

brands competences to the commercialization of offline products and the absence of

some of the costs originally attributed to brick and mortar companies such as, costs

linked to the establishment of stores, turn offline product into attractive markets where

online brands can be extended.

4

1.2 Industry Profile

Online advertising

Online advertising, also known as online advertisement, internet marketing, online

marketing or e-marketing, is the marketing and promotion of products or services

over the Internet.

Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web

to deliver marketing messages to larger audience. Examples of online advertising

include contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads, blogs, rich media

ads, social network advertising, interstitial ads, online classified advertising,

advertising networks, dynamic banner ads, cross-platform ads and e-mail marketing,

including e-mail spam. Many of these types of ads are delivered by an ad server.

Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web

to deliver marketing messages to attract targeted customers.

One major benefit of online advertising is the immediate publishing of information

and content that is not limited by geography or time. To that end, the emerging area of

interactive advertising presents fresh challenges for advertisers who have hitherto

adopted an interruptive strategy.

Another benefit is the efficiency of the advertiser's investment. Online advertising

allows for the customization of advertisements, including content and posted

websites. For example, AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google AdSense

enable ads to be shown on relevant web pages or alongside search results. Although

the overall return is not quantifiable as many Internet users either use ad blocking

software or simply do not respond to online adverts as they regard them as an invasive

platform.

The internet has become an ongoing emerging source that tends to expand more and

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more. The growth of this particular medium attracts the attention of advertisers as a

more productive source to bring in consumers. A clear advantage consumers have

with online advertisement is the control they have over the product, choosing whether

to check it out or not.

Online advertisements may also offer various forms of animation. In its most common

use, the term "online advertising" comprises all sorts of banner, e-mail, in-game, and

keyword advertising, including on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and

MySpace. Web-related advertising has a variety of ways to publicize and reach a

niche audience to focus its attention to a specific group. Research has proven that

online advertising has given results and is growing business revenue. For the year

2012, Jupiter Research predicted $34.5 billion in US online advertising spending.

Online advertisement can also be classified as Digital Promotions. Digital promotion

in connection to the television industry is when networks use authentic digital

resources to promote their new shows in a growing vast range of venues. Television

networks development of digital off air promotional strategies allowed digital

promotion to remain significant to the advertisement advancement in the television.

Examples of television online digital promotions: The Sci-Fi network for loaded a

special recap episode of Battlestar Galactica onto Microsoft’s Xbox online gaming

service; this gave the audience additional opportunities to sample content if they may

or may not be familiar with the show. Another example of digital promotion in

television is when network CBS incorporated new digital technologies of Bluetooth-

enabled mobile devices that were able to download a thirty-second clip of a new show

on their devices; consumers standing in range of a billboard don’t need an internet

link to download the show’s content. These non-linear viewing opportunities provided

as a valuable tool for gaining audiences; and to encourage them to intersect with the

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linear audience.

1.2.1 Types of Internet marketing/ online advertising

Internet marketing is broadly divided in to the following types:

Display advertising: the use of web banners or banner ads placed on a third-party

website or blog to drive traffic to a company's own website and increase product

awareness.

Search engine marketing (SEM): a form of marketing that seeks to promote

websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through

the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion, or through the

use of free search engine optimization techniques also known as organic result.

Search engine optimization (SEO): the process of improving the visibility of a

website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or

"algorithmic") search results.

Social media marketing: the process of gaining traffic or attention through social

media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Email marketing: directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people

using electronic mail.

Referral marketing: a method of promoting products or services to new customers

through referrals, usually word of mouth.

Affiliate marketing: a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more

affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's own marketing

efforts.

Content marketing: the process of creating specialized content such as info graphics,

blog articles and eBooks to attract more customers.

7

Inbound marketing: involves creating and freely sharing informative content as a

means of converting prospects into customers and customers into repeat buyers.

1.2.2 Business and Revenue Models

Internet marketing is associated with several business models:

E-commerce: a model whereby goods and services are sold directly to a consumer or

business.

Lead-based websites: a strategy whereby an organization generates value by

acquiring sales leads from its website, similar to walk-in customers in retail world.

These prospects are often referred to as organic leads.

Affiliate marketing: a process wherein a product or service developed by one entity

is sold by other active sellers for a share of profits. The entity that owns the product

may provide some marketing material (e.g., sales letters, affiliate links, tracking

facilities, etc.); however, the vast majority of affiliate marketing relationships come

from e-commerce businesses that offer affiliate programs.

It has following Revenue models:

The three most common ways in which online advertising is purchased are CPM,

CPC, and CPA.

CPM (Cost Per Mille) or CPT (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) is when

advertisers pay for exposure of their message to a specific audience. "Per mille"

means per thousand impressions, or loads of an advertisement. However, some

impressions may not be counted, such as a reload or internal user action.

CPV (Cost Per Visitor) is when advertisers pay for the delivery of a Targeted Visitor

to the advertisers website.

8

CPV (Cost Per View) is when advertisers pay for each unique user view of an

advertisement or website (usually used with pop-ups, pop-under and interstitial ads).

CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay per click) is when advertisers pay each time a

user clicks on their listing and is redirected to their website. They do not actually pay

for the listing, but only when the listing is clicked on. This system allows advertising

specialists to refine searches and gain information about their market.

CPA (Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition) or PPF (Pay Per Performance)

advertising is performance based and is common in the affiliate marketing sector of

the business. In this payment scheme, the publisher takes all the risk of running the

ad, and the advertiser pays only for the number of users who complete a transaction,

such as a purchase or sign-up. This model ignores any inefficiency in the seller's web

site conversion funnel.

CPL (Cost Per Lead) advertising is identical to CPA advertising and is based on the

user completing a form, registering for a newsletter or some other action that the

merchant feels will lead to a sale.

Given below (Table 1) is a list of top Ad server vendors in 2008 with figures in

millions of viewers published in an Attributor survey. Since 2008 Google has

controlled an estimated 69% of the online advertising market.

Vendor Ad viewers (millions)

Google 1,118

DoubleClick (Google) 1,079

Yahoo! 362

MSN (Microsoft) 309

AOL 156

9

Adbrite 73

Total 3,097

Table No-1: Top Ad sever vendors in 2008

Telecommunications equipment and its software

Telecommunications equipment (also telecoms equipment or communications

equipment) is hardware used for the purposes of telecommunications.

Since the 1990s the boundary between telecoms equipment and IT hardware has

become blurred as a result of the growth of the internet and its increasing role in the

transfer of telecoms data.

Companies in this industry make equipment used in telephone, data, radio and TV

broadcast, and wireless communications networks. Major companies include Apple,

Cisco Systems, Motorola Solutions, and QUALCOMM (all based in the US), as well

as Alcatel-Lucent (France), Ericsson (Sweden), Huawei (China), Nokia (Finland), and

Samsung (South Korea).

The industry depends on purchases from businesses, telephone companies, cable

companies, data communications providers, and TV and radio broadcasters.

Profitability for individual companies is linked to technical innovation and the ability

to secure high-volume contracts from large customers. Small companies can be

successful if they make highly specialized products. There are large economies of

scale in manufacturing standard products, but many products are specialized and

produced in small manufacturing plants. The industry is highly concentrated: the 50

largest companies generate about 80 percent of revenue. About 80 percent of industry

revenue comes from equipment for wireless communications (including radio and

10

TV); about 20 percent comes from equipment for line-based communications. The

industry produces transmitters and receivers (including satellites); signal boosters;

signal processors; connecting devices; power supplies; switches; and phones.

The world's 10 largest mobile phone handset vendors measured by unit sales in the

third quarter of 2012 are (global market share shown in Table 2)

Company Market Share

(in %age)

Samsung 22.9

Nokia 19.2

Apple 5.5

ZTE 3.9

LG Electronics 3.3

Huawei 2.8

TCL 2.2

Research In Motion 2.1

Motorola

Mobility(now become

Google Mobile)

2.0

HTC 2.0

Table No-2: world’s 10 largest mobile phone handset vendors

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As of 2012 many of the largest telecoms networking equipment vendors are

struggling financially due to oversupply, rising market share of China-based vendors,

and declining revenues for 2G and 3G networks not being fully offset by the growing

market for 4G equipment.

A mobile operating system, also referred to as mobile OS, is the operating system that

operates a Smartphone, tablet, PDA, or other digital mobile devices. Modern mobile

operating systems combine the features of a personal computer operating system with

touch screen, cellular, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS mobile navigation, camera, video

camera, speech recognition, voice recorder, music player, Near field communication,

personal digital assistant (PDA) and other features.

The most common mobile operating systems are:

Android from Google Inc.

Android was developed by a small startup company (Android Inc.) that was purchased

by Google Inc. in 2005, which Google has continued to update the software. Android

is a Linux-derived OS backed by Google, along with major hardware and software

developers (such as Intel, HTC, ARM, Samsung, Motorola and eBay, to name a few),

that forms the Open Handset Alliance. Released on November 5th 2007, the OS was

well received from a number of developers upon its introduction. From Q2 of 2009 to

the second quarter of 2010, Android's worldwide market share rose 850% from 1.8%

to 17.2%. On November 15, 2011, Android reached 52.5% of the global Smartphone

market share.

BlackBerry 10 from BlackBerry

BlackBerry 10 (previously BlackBerry BBX) the next generation platform for

12

BlackBerry smartphones and tablets. In other words, there will be only one OS for

both Blackberry smartphones and tablets going forward.

iOS from Apple Inc.(closed source, on top of open source Darwin core OS)

The Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and second-generation Apple TV all use an

operating system called iOS, which is derived from Mac OS X. Native third party

applications were not officially supported until the release of iOS 2.0 on July 11th

2008. Before this, "jailbreaking" allowed third party applications to be installed, and

this method is still available. Currently all iOS devices are developed by Apple and

manufactured by Foxconn or another of Apple's partners.

Windows Phone from Microsoft (closed source, proprietary)

On February 15th, 2010, Microsoft unveiled its next-generation mobile OS, Windows

Phone. The new mobile OS includes a completely new over-hauled UI inspired by

Microsoft's "Metro Design Language". It includes full integration of Microsoft

services such as Microsoft SkyDrive and Office, Xbox Music, Xbox Video, Xbox

Live games and Bing, but also integrates with many other non-Microsoft services

such as Facebook and Google accounts. The new software platform has received some

positive reception from the technology press.

Linux based operating system (open source, GPL)

Linux is strongest in China where it is used by Motorola (now Google), and in Japan,

used by DoCoMo. Rather than being an OS in its own right, Linux is used as a basis

for a number of different operating systems developed by several vendors, including

Android, GridOS, Boot to Gecko, LiMo, Maemo, MeeGo, Openmoko and Qt

Extended, which are mostly incompatible. PalmSource (now Access) is moving

towards an interface running on Linux. Another software platform based on Linux is

being developed by Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Samsung and

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Vodafone.

In 2006, Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Bada did not yet exist and just 64 million

smartphones were sold. Today, nearly 10 times as many smartphones are sold and the

top mobile operating systems marketed as "smartphones" by market share are

Android, Symbian, Apple iOS, BlackBerry, MeeGo, Windows Phone and Bada.

1.3 Company Profile

Google Inc. is an American multinational corporation that provides Internet-related

products and services, including internet search, Telecoms equipment and its

application, cloud computing, software and advertising technologies. Advertising

revenues from AdWords generate almost all of the company's profits.

The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while both attended

Stanford University. Together, Brin and Page own about 16 percent of the company's

stake. Google was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 4,

1998, and its initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004. In 2006, the

company moved to its headquarters in Mountain View, California.

The company offers online productivity software including email, an office suite, and

social networking. Google's products extend to the desktop as well, with applications

for web browsing, organizing and editing photos, and instant messaging. Google leads

the development of the Android mobile operating system, as well as the Google

Chrome OS browser-only operating system, found on specialized netbooks called

Chromebooks. Google has increasingly become a hardware company with its

partnerships with major electronics manufacturers on its high-end Nexus series of

devices and its acquisition of Motorola Mobility in May 2012, as well as the

construction of fiber-optic infrastructure in Kansas City as part of the Google Fiber

broadband Internet service project.

14

Google has been estimated to run over one million servers in data centers around the

world, and process over one billion search requests and about twenty-four petabytes

of user-generated data every day.

As of December 2012, Alexa listed the main U.S. focused google.com site as the

Internet's most visited website and numerous international Google sites as being in the

top hundred, as well as several other Google-owned sites such as YouTube and

Blogger. In 2011, 96% of Google's revenue was derived from its advertising

programs. For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total

advertising revenues and only $112 million in licensing and other revenues. Google

has implemented various innovations in the online advertising market that helped

make it one of the biggest brokers in the market. Using technology from the company

DoubleClick, Google can determine user interests and target advertisements so they

are relevant to their context and the user that is viewing them. Google Analytics

allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example

by examining click rates for all the links on a page. Google advertisements can be

placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google's AdWords allows

advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network, through

either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. The sister service, Google AdSense,

allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website, and earn

money every time ads are clicked.

Google Search, a web search engine, is the company's most popular service.

According to market research published by comScore in November 2009, Google is

the dominant search engine in the United States market, with a market share of 65.6%.

Google indexes billions of web pages, so that users can search for the information

they desire, through the use of keywords and operators.

15

In May 2011, the number of monthly unique visitors to Google surpassed one billion

for the first time, an 8.4 percent increase from May 2010 (931 million).

In January of 2013, Google announced it had earned $50 billion in annual revenue for

the year of 2012. This marked the first time Google had reached this feat, topping

their 2011 total of $38 billion.

Google Inc. Currently owns and operates six data centers across the U.S., plus one in

Finland and another in Belgium. On September 28, 2011, the company announced

plans to build three data centers at a cost of more than $200 million in Asia

(Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan) and purchased the land for them.

Since 2001, Google has acquired many companies, mainly focusing on small venture

capital companies. In 2004, Google acquired Keyhole, Inc. The start-up company

developed a product called Earth Viewer that gave a three-dimensional view of the

Earth. Google renamed the service to Google Earth in 2005. Two years later, Google

bought the online video site YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. On April 13, 2007,

Google reached an agreement to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, giving Google

valuable relationships that DoubleClick had with Web publishers and advertising

agencies. Later that same year, Google purchased GrandCentral for $50 million. The

site would later be changed over to Google Voice. On August 5, 2009, Google bought

out its first public company, purchasing video software maker On2 Technologies for

$106.5 million. Google also acquired Aardvark, a social network search engine, for

$50 million. In April 2010, Google announced it had acquired a hardware startup,

Agnilux.

Google is known for having an informal corporate culture. On Fortune magazine's list

of best companies to work for, Google ranked first in 2007, 2008 and 2012 and fourth

in 2009 and 2010. Google was also nominated in 2010 to be the world's most

16

attractive employer to graduating students in the Universum Communications talent

attraction index. Google's corporate philosophy embodies such casual principles as

"you can make money without doing evil," "you can be serious without a suit," and

"work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun."

1.31 Timeline of Google

Figure 1 shows timeline of Google since 1998 i.e. foundation of Google to 2011,

when google acquired Motorola Mobility google diversify into market and product

globally.

17

Figure No-1: Timeline of Google Inc.

1.32 Vision and Mission

The company's vision statement is "to develop a perfect search engine" and the

company's mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's

information and make it universally accessible and useful" and the company's

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unofficial slogan is "Don't be evil".

1.33 Products offer by Google Inc.

This list of Google products includes all major desktop, mobile and online products

released or acquired by Google Inc. This list also includes prior products, that have

been merged, discarded or renamed.

Web-based products

These products must be accessed via a web browser:

Google search – web search engine, which is Google's core product. It was the

company's first creation, coming out of beta on September 21, 1999, and remains their

most popular and famous service. It receives 100 billion search queries per month and

is the most used search engine on the Internet.

Google Books (was Print) – search engine for the full text of printed books. Google

scans and stores in its digital database. The content that is displayed depends on the

arrangement with the publishers, ranging from short extracts to entire books. Etc.

Communication and publishing tools

FeedBurner – news feed management services, including feed traffic analysis and

advertising facilities.

Google Docs – document, spreadsheet, drawing and presentation application, with

document collaboration and publishing capabilities.

Google Drive – an online backup service and storage space. This service is connected

with Google Docs.

Gmail (also termed Google Mail) – free Webmail IMAP and POP email service

provided by Google, known for its abundant storage, intuitive search-based interface

and elasticity. It was first released in an invitation-only form on April 1, 2004. Mobile

19

access and Google Talk integration is also featured.

Operating systems

Android – an operating system for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet

computers.

Google Chrome OS – Linux-based operating system designed by Google to work

exclusively with web applications. Runs on the "Chromebook" and the nettop

"Chromebox", the first of which (Samsung Series 3) was released in May 2012.[11]

Google TV – smart TV platform that integrates Android and the Linux version of

Google Chrome to create an interactive television overlay on top of existing internet

television and WebTV sites to add a 10-foot user interface.

Hardware

Google Enterprise Search Appliance – a search appliance designed for indexing

corporate data.

Motorola Mobility – mobile manufacturer. In August 2011, Google, Inc., announced

that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for $12.5 billion USD in cash. The

deal closed on 23 May 2012.

Nexus One – Smartphone running the Android open source mobile operating system.

Chromebook – Laptop personal computer running the Google Chrome O

1.34 SWOT Analysis of Google Inc.

Strengths

1. Google controls 83.7% of the global desktop search market.

2. Google controls 89% of the global mobile search market.

3. Google has $45.72 billion in cash and only $3 billion in long term debt.

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4. Google's Android system accounted for 72.4% of all smartphones sales in Q3 2012

according to Gartner.

5. The Samsung Galaxy S3 (which runs on Android) has been selling very well

(outpaced the iPhone 4S in Q3) and many are saying that it is better than the iPhone.

6. Vast app ecosystem with tons of apps and developers.

7. The Nexus 7 got great reviews and is selling very well right now, eating into

Apple's market share.

8. US paid click traffic is up 27% year over year in Q3 2012.

Weaknesses

1. It is Dependent on Microsoft's operating system on desktops (which controls over

90% of the desktop OS market) for its desktop search engine, yet it competes with

Microsoft in numerous different sectors.

2. It Missed earnings expectations last quarter and saw its stock price fall.

3. Gross Margin is coming down (65.29% TTM versus 59.76% in the latest quarter)

as more searches come from developing countries where the revenue per click is

lower than in developed nations.

4. Google is losing map services market share (has fallen by 50% in China) as Apple

continues to box out Google in this very lucrative industry.

Opportunities

1. Total paid clicks continue to rise, with most of the growth coming from developing

nations. Google's paid click traffic was up 28.8% in the US year over year (for Q3

2012).

2. Google is making a lot of headway into the tablet market.

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3. The smartphone market in the US isn't saturated yet and millions still need

smartphones, many of which will come with Android's OS.

4. Lots of cash means it can buy up strategic assets (like Twitter) to boost profits.

5. S&P just raised Google's corporate credit rating to AA and it could rise higher.

6. Google is pushing into the cable industry, starting up a fiber optic network in

Kansas City.

7. Location Based revenue is expected to grow from $2.8 billion in 2010 to $10.3

billion in 2015 according to Pyramid Research.

Threats

1. Apple is trying to box Google out of the fast growing location service industry.

2. Microsoft is aggressively pushing into the smartphone and tablet industry with the

launch of Windows 8.

3. Bing is gaining some market share in the US search industry; going from 19.4% in

Q4 2011 (Google had 80.6% of the market) to 21.3% in Q3 2012 (Google now has

78.7% of the market). Keep in mind this is just the US search market.

4. While this is a long shot, antitrust issues could ensue, especially if Google tries to

push into the fiber optic industry with its dominance in the search market.

5. The Smartphone industry remains one of the most competitive markets in the world

and you must always be on top of your game. One year of bad phone line ups and you

could end up like Blackberry.

6. Companies like Facebook and Twitter can take up a lot of internet viewing time,

decreasing the chance that consumers search the web.

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1.4 Objectives of Study

Every research is conducted for achieving some objectives & the objectives of the

study are:

To study the marketing mix strategies comprising of 4P’s of Google Inc.

To study the online services extended to offline products of Google Inc.

To study the relationship among some important variables of Brand extension.

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To analyze the significance of some important variables towards the

extensions.

1.5 Scope of Study

The scope of the study is limited and the approach of the study focuses mainly on

the perspective of consumers who are using Google online services and offline

products in and nearby Rohini locality at New Delhi, for this purpose the

researcher is expected to go through data analysis based on the primary data of

100 respondents along with the secondary data. This study is also useful for

understanding the extension of brands for others organizations as well.

1.6 Research Methodology:

a) Research Design

The research is descriptive in nature as it tries to assess the significance of

some important variables which affect the brand extension. Descriptive

research is an exploration of the certain existing phenomenon. It is mostly

done when a researcher wants to gain a better understanding of the topic.

b) Universe of the study

The universe of the study is users of the Google online and offline products

and services.

c) Population of study

The samples will be collected from Rohini, Delhi.

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d) Sampling technique

The sampling technique will be adopted as convenience sampling. The

samples will be collected from Rohini, Delhi. Convenience sampling is used

as it is a non probability sampling technique where subjects are selected

because of their convenient accessibility and proximity to the researcher.

e) Sample size

The sample size for the study is 100 because of a rule of thumb. It means that

(Number of variables x 100).

In this study there is only one variable i.e. customer preference. That’s why

researcher will use 100 as a sample size.

f) Tools for data collection

A Structured questionnaire is used to collect the data as respondent asked to

give his/her opinion on the different factors that affect brand extension of

Google Inc. A questionnaire is prepared by taking into consideration the

various factors which affect the decision regarding brand extension of Google.

g) Sources of data collection

1. Primary Data

Primary data are collected from a sample of 100 respondents, chosen by

convenience sampling method. Structured questionnaire based on Likert Scale is

used to obtain first hand primary data.

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2. Secondary Data

Secondary data is the data that have been already collected by and readily

available from other sources. For the purpose of the study secondary data has

been collected from:

Research Papers

Books

Journals/ Magazines

Other websites

h) Methodology used for Data Analysis:

a. Regression Analysis: Regression analysis is a statistical technique for

estimating the relationships among variables. Regression analysis helps one

understand how the typical value of the dependent variable changes when

any one of the independent variables is varied, while the other independent

variables are held fixed.

b. Correlation: Correlation is the study of mutual relationship between two or

more things. Correlation has been used in order to understand the high

degree of association between two or more variables towards the extensions

evaluation.

i) Tools for Data Analysis:

Tool proposed to be used in this project for data analysis are:

MS Excel and

SPSS (Software Package for Social Sciences)

j) Reliability Statistics

The reliability of the questionnaire is checked by collecting the data by filling the

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questionnaires from 20 respondents. The reliability statistics is given in Table 3.

Table No-3: Reliability Statistics

From the above statistics, we get the value of coefficient of alpha (α) is 0.826. The

questionnaire is said to be reliable when the coefficient of α value must be above 0.70.

1.7 Hypothesis

In this section we focus on the acceptance of brand extensions for google.

Specifically, we focus on Brand Awareness, Perceived Quality, Brand Loyalty,

Perceived Similarity, and Innovativeness as factors influencing the acceptability of

brand extensions.

1.7.1 Brand knowledge

Aaker defined brand awareness as the salience of the brand in the customers mind and

identified six levels of awareness: recognition, recall, top-of-mind, and brand

dominance, brand knowledge and brand opinion. The brand extension research has

focused its attention on brand knowledge in order to explain extension evaluations.

H0: Consumer knowledge of the online brand, original product category and

offline extension category has negative effects on the extension evaluation.

H1: Consumer knowledge of the online brand, original product category and

offline extension category has positive effects on the extension evaluation.

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1.7.2 Perceive quality

Perceive quality designates a global assessment of a consumer´s judgement about the

superiority or excellence of a product. The perceived quality construct has been

included in diverse brand extension articles. Aaker and Keller suggested that when

consumers have a high overall perception about the quality of the brand, the extension

should be assessed more positively than when they infer a low overall quality.

Nevertheless, they found that quality only affected the attitude towards the extension

favourably when it was accompanied by a high degree of similarity.

H0 Higher quality perceptions toward the original online brand are associated

with negative attitudes toward the offline extension.

H2 Higher quality perceptions toward the original online brand are associated

with more favourable attitudes toward the offline extension.

1.7.3 Brand loyalty

Brand loyalty has also had a significant relevance in studies focused on brand

extension evaluation in the online context. Its mention the difficulty of earning and

maintaining customer loyalty for Internet companies where the cost of switching

between online services is extremely low, and thus online companies often face

constant competition with numerous others companies which are just one click away.

H0 Online brand loyalty has a negative effect on consumer attitude towards the

offline brand extension launched by online companies.

H3 Online brand loyalty has a positive effect on consumer attitude towards the

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offline brand extension launched by online companies.

1.7.4 Perceived similarity

Perceived similarity has been found to be a major determinant of brand extension

evaluations. According to Gierl and Huettl, (2011), the rationale behind the effects of

similarity on attitude towards extensions is explained by the application of the

categorization theory to the brand extension domain. In this line, consumers compare

their knowledge category related to the parent brand to the characteristics presented

by the extension product and, if there is a sufficient level of similarity, this

information about the brand, stored in consumers’ memories, is transferred to the

extension product. Therefore, consumers evaluate more favourably those extensions

that present a high degree of similarity or fit with the parent brand. This overall

dimension of similarity leads to the following hypothesis:

H0: The overall perceived similarity between the online parent brand and the

extension has a negative effect on consumer attitude toward the offline extension.

H4: The overall perceived similarity between the online parent brand and the

extension has a positive effect on consumer attitude toward the offline extension.

1.7.5 Innovativeness

Innovativeness is a personality trait related to an individual’s receptivity to new ideas

and willingness to try new practices and brands. The importance of innovativeness

has been examined extensively in the literature on diffusion of innovation and

consumer behavior. In evaluating brand extensions, consumer innovativeness has been

considered as an antecedent of positive consumer attitude towards extensions. The

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authors found consumer innovativeness as a moderating factor of similarity, stating

that consumers with high degree of innovativeness do not base their extension

evaluation on perceived similarity.

H0: Consumers with a high degree of innovativeness will evaluate negatively

offline brand extensions from Internet brands.

H5: Consumers with a high degree of innovativeness will evaluate more positively

offline brand extensions from Internet brands.

1.8 The Hypothesized Model

Following the procedures of the previous research the hypotheses proposed above are

studied within a linear regression model, where the dependent variable, the attitude

towards the extension, is explained by ten explicative factors that represent the

independent variables of the regression. The linear regression model is as follows:

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ATT = α + β1BK+ β2 PQ+ β3 BLO + β4 PS + β5 CIN+ ε

Where the dependable variable:

ATT= Overall attitude towards the brand extension, and where the independent variables are:

BK = Brand knowledge or familiarity

PQ = Perceived quality of the parent brand

BLO = Brand loyalty

PS = Perceived similarity

CIN = Consumer innovativeness

α = Constant

ε = Standard Error

Hypothesis Factors

H1

Consumer knowledge of the online brand, original product

category and offline extension category has positive effects on

the extension evaluation.

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H2

Higher quality perceptions toward the original online brand

are associated with more favourable attitudes toward the

offline extension.

H3

Online brand loyalty has a positive effect on consumer attitude

towards the offline brand extension launched by online

companies.

H4

The overall perceived similarity between the online parent

brand and the extension has a positive effect on consumer

attitude toward the offline extension.

H5

Consumers with a high degree of innovativeness will evaluate

more positively offline brand extensions from Internet brands.

Table No-4: Hypothesis and Factors

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Chapter-2:

Literature Review

2.1 Overview

2.1.1 Brand Extension Definition

The ever-changing market characteristics have huge impact on the corporate

decisions. The Global environment also poses several complexities to the marketer in

understanding the market. The companies constantly innovate newer marketing

strategies to stay ahead in the market and reap more benefits for its stakeholders.

More number of companies is relying on launching new products in the market to

meet the changing consumer needs and preferences. This strategy is proven but not

without risk. Some authors estimate that 30-35% of all new products fail. Others

estimate more negatively in that only two out of ten products launched are successful

in the market. Adding to the difficulty in accurately predicting the market dynamics,

the promotion cost and shelf space cost to face the competition makes the company’s

new product launches even more difficult and invariably lead to loosing the market.

Companies are taking hard steps to reduce these failure rates. One way of dealing with

the rate of failures of new products is using a firm’s competence. Many business

organizations are leveraging their brand names to reduce the risk of failure of new

products. A brand extension is the use of well-known brand names for new-product

introductions. A Brand Extension means a firm uses an established brand name to

introduce a new product. BE is an act in which the firm markets a new product

category with an established brand name; it does so to increase and lever on its

existing brand equity. The existing core brand equity helps to bypass the otherwise

lengthy and expensive new product promotion. However, if the Brand Extension

strategy is not thoughtfully done, it can bring in significant risks resulting in diluted

brand image. In practical cases, the failures of BE are at higher rate than the

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successes. A good BE strategy is one where the brand name aids the extension, while

a very good Brand Extension also enhances the brand name.

2.1.2 Brand Extension Strategies

In the interests of understanding Brand Extension (BE), researchers have developed

various theories about extension strategies. Brand breadths and category similarity

interact to influence BE attitude. It has been concluded that when a parent brand is

extended into related (similar) categories, consumers are likely to perceive the new

specific extension more favorably than when the extension is into dissimilar

categories.

All investigations into the determinants of successful BEs initially assume that a

brand is an accumulation of associations and that parent brand associations can

influence consumer’s reactions to BEs. Brands with strong associations are more

successful if they differentiate from competing brands and can be more easily

extended into other product categories. The attributes, benefits and attitudes are the

key elements in brand associations, of which brand attitude being the highest form.

Brand attitude can be measured via BT and brand affect. Brand attitude is the highest

level of brand association and frequently forms the basis of consumer behavior (e.g.,

brand choice). Hence, the study employed Brand Trust and Brand Affect as the key

elements in evaluating consumers brand attitude and further evaluated these with

Brand Loyalty and their effects on Brand Extension. Customer loyalty can be

determined via BT and by Brand Affect. Strong Brand Trust influences product

evaluation because of the low purchase risk perceived by a consumer. Consumers

transfer parent BT to products when consumers trust a brand and perceive it as safe.

They also perceive that purchasing that brand’s products as being without risk. A

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positive relationship exists between BT and acceptance of BE. As verified by several

studies, consumer’s perceptions of a parent brand also have an impact on their

feelings toward the brand product categories.

The research on brand extensions has particularly emphasized the role of consistency,

adaptability or relation between the two classes of product implicated in the brand

extension process. The Tauber (1988) study concluded that the perceptive adaptation

is a key element to predict the success of the brand extension. Also the analysis

carried out at the Consumer Behavior Seminar (University of Minnesota, 1987) gave

empirical support to the notion that the bigger the similarity perceived between the

product of the original brand and that of the extension leads to a bigger transfer of

positive aspects to the latter. According to Bridges (1991), the underlying idea is that

individuals store memory for people, objects and concepts in summary chunks known

as categories. When a new stimulus “fits” into an existing category, the individual first

will tend to infer properties of the stimulus based on knowledge of the category and

second can transfer affect associated with the category to new stimulus (i.e. the new

product). This can be interpreted as a process of integration and assimilation, which is

conditioned by the information the consumer, has about the brand.

2.1.3 Brand Extension Evaluations

Ever since the first relevant article on customer evaluations of brand extensions was

published by Boush et al. (1987), researchers have focused their researches on

invetigating the antecedents, processes, and consequences of brand extension

evaluation, as well as achieving a generalization of these factors across product

categories and parent brands.

Boush et al. (1987) identified perceived similarity and parent brand reputation as

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explicative factors of positive customer evaluations of extensions. They concluded

that similarities between product categories, original product and extension, enable

the transfer of positive affection to the new product. On the other hand, the study

suggested that a brand's good reputation in one product area cannot be transferred in

the same way to a dissimilar product category, since it would produce negative

evaluations from consumers.

Following the research line supported by Boush et al., (1987), Aaker and Keller's

(1990) seminal article assessed not only the role of similarity between original and

extension product classes but also proposed that customer's quality perceptions about

the parent brand and the difficulty of producing the extension determined the

consumer acceptance of brand extensions. Despite of the fact this article stated the

base of subsequent research on brand extensions and it has been applied to different

contexts such as services or online extensions, replications have emerged about the

validity and generalization of its conclusions. Moreover, additional factors such as

consumer innovativeness, familiarity or marketing support were subsequently tested

in brand extension literature with mixed conclusions.

Brand Extension Attitude Model (Boush et al., 1987; Sheinin and Schmitt,

1994; Herr and Cramer, 1996; and Bhat and Reddy, 2001)

Figure No-2: Brand Extension Attitude Model

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BrandAffect (BA)

Brand Loyalty(BL)

BrandTrust (BT)

BrandExtension(BE)

2.1.4 Factors related to the parent brand

Factors related to the parent brand

Factor Consumers evaluate positively the extension if…

Perceived quality The perceived quality of the parent brand is high.

Brand associations

They transfer positive brand associations to the

Extension.

Brand Loyalty They are loyal to the parent brand.

Familiarity The familiarity with the parent brand is high.

Similarity

Product category similarity There is congruence between product categories

Brand concept consistency Parent brand and extension share the same image

The extension´s marketing context

Marketing support The extension receives appropriate marketing support.

Advertising The extension is well supported in terms of

advertising.

Consumer characteristics

Innovativeness They are highly innovative (early adopters)

Motivation They have a high motivation for purchasing the

Extension.

Involvement There is an involvement in the brand extension

Category.

Table No-5: Main Factors of Brand Extension Evaluation

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2.1.5 The Four P's of Google Inc.

Google’s marketing plan can be broken down into the four P’s of marketing; product,

price, promotion and place. Google has taken into consideration each one of these

areas of marketing and used them as an advantage over their competitors.

Product

Product is one of the components of the 4P’s of marketing. A company or an

individual must have product to market and to offer to the people. A product is define

as anything that can be offered to a market for attention, use, or consumption, and that

might satisfy a want or need.

Google offers services as a form of it product to its customers. The products they offer

fall into industrial products; Google’s business products offer services to their

customers such as advertising and providing their search technology to solve

companies’ search problems within their intranet. Also, they also sell tangible items

along with its service or hybrid offers and also sell “pure” products.

Google categorizes their products into three classes: Advertising solutions, Business

Solutions, and the Google Store. In their Advertising solutions, they offer Google’s

AdWords. Google offers text-based ads that are precise to the search on the site of the

user and the customers pay Google every time internet search users click on their site.

They help the customers to set up their site as the volume of visitors to the customer

site’s increases.

In their Business Solutions Google offers a Search Appliance to companies who need

solutions to the search problems that their employees conducting within their

computers by bringing in Google’s search technology and intranet to their clients.

Google provides both the hardware and the software to the customers. Google has

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three models of the Search Appliance: the GB-1001 for departments and mid-sized

companies, the GB-5005 for dedicated high-priority search services such as customer-

facing websites and company-wide intranet applications, and the GB-8008 for

centralized deployments supporting global business units.

Lastly, The Google Store sells tangible items such as shirts, notebooks, bags, caps,

lava lamps to almost anything that they can print their company’s name on.

Price

Price is another component of the four Ps of the market mix. Price is defined as “The

amount of money charged for a product or service or the sum of the values that

consumers exchange for the benefits of having or using the product or service”. It is

extremely important for marketers to remember that individuals in a market are highly

receptive not only to the price of an item, but also to the value offered by the product.

Successful companies such as Google take special consideration at the different parts

involved in setting its prices. Item such as list price, discounts, allowances, payment

periods and credit terms are items that work together to set the price of its

merchandise.

List price is one of the fundamentals components of setting a price. List price is

defined as, “Price normally quoted to potential buyers” . It is the basic price offered to

prospective consumers, yet in many instances the price listed could increase or

decrease as costumers select options. Google’s price for AdWords is set on the

amount of advertisement per day it provides its consumers. In Google’s case the list

price is at five cents per day, however it can go as high as $50.00 per day. The price

difference will depend on the amount of advertisement per day that the consumers are

39

willing to pay and the amount of times individuals click to see the ads and how high

these ads rank on a search page.

Discounts are another element of price setting. The three types of discounts are

quantity, trade and cash. Quantity discounts are offered to consumers for buying in

bulks or in large quantities. Trade discounts is defined as, “Payments to a channel

member or buyer for performing marketing functions; also called a functional

discount”. Last but not least are cash discounts offered to customers for the punctual

payment of their invoices. At the moment Google AdWords is not offering consumers

any of the discounts mentioned above.

Another necessary item to set price is Allowances. Allowances are very similar to

discounts because it also offers to lower the list price, yet it includes extra items not

covered by discounts. Two major types are trade-in and promotional allowance.

Trade-ins are commonly used in reducing the amount consumers must pay for a

product by recognizing the value of a used product. Car Dealerships are a good

example of companies that provide allowance to consumer based on trade-ins.

Promotional allowance are, “Promotional funds provided by a manufacturer to other

channel members in an attempt to integrate promotional strategy within the channel”.

Fast food franchisers are organizations that provide promotional activities, such as

television ads, to attract customers to its franchisees. Google at the moment is not

providing its customers with discounts nor allowances in its Google AdWords

program.

Marketers promoting a product need to take into consideration payment period offered

to its customers. There are different ways in which a company can set the length of

time required to pay a bill. For instance organizations can set the time based on the

requirements of its competitors. Google payment period is based on its relationship

40

with its customers. New customers located in specific countries need to make their

payments with a credit card or by direct debit payments. As soon as the finance

department receives the financial information and it is approved, the ads begin to run,

yet if a customer has a long and positive relationship with Google its financial

department might be able to set a monthly account. This is based on the credit history

of the customer.

Last but not least, the credit terms required by an organization to finalize the product

price. Google’s structure tightly relates payment periods with credit terms, yet each

organizations credit terms vary depending on the type of industry. As mentioned

earlier, Google provides a monthly credit limit for those customers with good

financial record. The credit limit starts at $50.00 a month and it can increase to more

than $500.00 a month.

Promotion

Promotions are activities such as advertising, personal selling, and sales promotion

which communicate the merits of the product and persuade target customers to buy it .

Time and time again Google has refused to jumble its homepage with annoying

advertisements, banners, or links to other websites, as reported by Ben Elgin in a

recent issue of BusinessWeek. Other companies have flourished mainly due to their

colossal advertising campaigns. For years, Google has committed itself to focus on

search and avoids fancy graphics. Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin dislike the

idea of ads affecting search results. Consequently, Google does not do a whole lot to

get their name out to the public. Surprisingly, the company has grown by word of

mouth, not by advertising. Google relies greatly on word of mouth to develop and

expand their innovative brand. The more credible a brand is, the more widely its

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reputation will spread. Google, like Kleenex and Xerox, has become so pervasive that

the brand name is used as an ordinary word. Google’s convenient service and precise

search results have made it one of the world’s best-known brands and search engines

almost completely through word of mouth from satisfied users.

Despite emerging onto the scene later than others, Google has risen to outdo all of its

competitors becoming what is now the most popular Internet search engine. Several

people like the fact that Google offers a minimal homepage, which loads immediately

without annoying advertisements. Lycos and AltaVista advertise heavily and load

their homepage with flash. People seem to like Google more because of its simple and

direct approach. As a result of Google’s outstanding results it has compelled its

dedicated users to inform everyone else about their remarkable search engine.

Google’s growth is proof of the power of viral marketing, without the need for

massive advertising budgets.

Place

An important decision when trying to determine the overall competitive marketing

strategy is place. Place includes company activities that make the product available to

target consumers. Google’s place is the internet. When it comes to Google and trying

to target their consumers, the people on the Internet, no one does it better.

In the past three years, Google has gone from processing 100 million searches per day

to over 200 million searches per day and only one-third comes from inside the U.S.,

the rest are in 88 other languages.

VeriSign, which operates much of the Internet's infrastructure, was processing 600

million domain requests per day in early 2000. It's now processing nine billion per

day. A domain request is anytime anyone types in .com or .net. Within the next few

42

years users will be able to be both mobile and totally connected, thanks to the pending

explosion of Wi-Fi, or wireless fidelity. Using radio technology, Wi-Fi will provide

high-speed connection from your laptop computer or P.D.A. to the Internet from

anywhere; McDonald's, the beach or your library.

Google introduced the language limit in April 2000 with eleven languages, which was

expanded as of Aug. 2000 to 24. As of July 2001, Russian was added. In Nov. 2001,

Arabic and Turkish and then in early 2002 Catalan, Croatian, Indonesian, Serbian,

Slovak, and Slovenian joined the group for the following 34 language limit options.

These are available on the Advanced Search page and their Language Tools page.

Google is one of about four search engines that have significant results. There are

many more than four engines, but only about four have the technology to crawl much

of the web on a regular basis. Google and Alltheweb do the best crawling. As of July

2003, Yahoo owned Overture, Alltheweb, AltaVista, and Inktomi, and finally dumped

Google in February 2004. Everything needed to turn Yahoo into a major search

engine and pay-for-inclusion ad agency, at a level that can compete with Google, is

under Yahoo's roof. Early evidence suggests that Yahoo will shoot themselves in the

foot with all of this firepower; their desire to monetize everything appears to be high

on the agenda. Google, on the other hand, has been selling out only recently, and still

shows some "pure search" residue from its early roots.

Even Microsoft, which is busy developing its own engine, is currently squeezed

between the advertising engine of Overture and the search engine Inktomi; both of

which are Yahoo property. Microsoft might like to buy Google as a way out but

Google is not for sale. Even if it were, there might be antitrust problems that prevent

such an acquisition.

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Just as Microsoft was late to recognize the importance of the Internet, they are once

again unprepared to take on Yahoo and Google. In 2003 Microsoft began

experimenting with their own crawler at a very low level. Good search engines need

many months of practice before they can crawl the web effectively, and order the

results so that searchers perceive them to be relevant. Some observers doubt that

Microsoft has the coordination to achieve through in-house technical development,

what they cannot achieve through acquisition and market manipulation. Even though

they have announced that they are pouring resources into search engine development,

this time it will take more than talk.

The last search engine worth watching is Teoma/AskJeeves. Their search technology

is good, and they seem serious about expanding their crawl. It remains to be seen how

deeply and consistently they will be able to crawl websites with thousands of pages.

Google is easily top dog. They provide about 75 percent of the external referrals for

most websites and if you count Google's partners as part of the mix (particularly

Yahoo and AOL), this figure is closer to 85 percent. There is no point in putting up a

website apart from Google. It's do or die with Google.

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2.2 Literature Review

Brand extensions represent an important growth strategy for companies facing a fierce

competence within the marketplace. The use of an already existing brand when

launching new products into the market increases the likelihood of success because

consumers perceive a lower risk in their purchasing process and transfer positive

consumer associations to the new product. Therefore, the way in which consumers

evaluate the new extensions and the determinants involved in this process will

determine the success or fail of brand extensions and, consequently, the image of the

parent brand may be reinforced or harmed.

In order to investigate how consumers evaluate brand extensions, scholars have

proposed numerous explicative factors of consumer’s attitude towards the new

products and they have applied them to different types of products, companies and

markets. Following this idea, this chapter reviews the existing literature regarding

consumer evaluation of brand extensions.

2.2.1 Bravo Rafael, E. Hem Leif (2012) explained the expansion of an online brand

towards an offline product category through brand extensions and alliances.

Specifically, the paper focuses on analyzing the effects on the online brand image as a

consequence of this expansion, and it analyses them under different conditions of

image and fit. An empirical study was conducted to 407 undergraduates in a Spanish

University, and data are analyzed through multivariate analysis of variance. From the

research “From Online to Offline Through Brand Extensions and Alliances”

results can be summarized as the effects of extensions and alliances are mainly

negative on the online brand image, the impact is focused specially on the functional

and emotional dimensions of brand image, the effect is more negative for online

45

brands with high image than for online brands with low image, and the effect is more

negative in the case of an alliance with an offline brand with low image than in the

case of an alliance with an offline brand with high image or in a brand extension.

2.2.2 Joji Alex N (2011) looked into product line Brand Extension attitude among

users of brands of Maruti 800 and Dove soap. The study also examined the

importance of Brand Affect, Brand Trust and Brand Loyalty in the parent brand, while

consumers consider product line Brand Extension. The research question asked was:

Does brand loyalty have an impact on product line Brand Extension attitude in highly

competitive markets with plenty of fairly close substitutes? The respondents were just

above neutral about their idea of brand loyalty, which indicated that a positive brand

trust has led to a positive product line Brand Extension attitude. They were not likely

to be loyal to the brands of Maruti or Dove in their next product purchase or

upgradation. From the research "Consumer Evaluations of Product Line Brand

Extension” the marketers were of the opinion that high brand equity will attract

loyalty to their brands but for the customer, the cost of switching was lower and

he/she also wished to try comparable substitutes. Even though Brand Trust exists,

customers would have like to try different products belonging to comparable brands,

hence loyalty may not have enhanced extension attitude.

2.2.3 Alam M. S, Faruq, Sharmin (Dec. 2010) research study is focused on low

involvement products and opinion of consumers on extension of product. A very well

known brand (PRAN brand Juice) its extension was chosen for this study. The study

“Evaluation of Brand Extension (Similar and Distance Product Category) with

respect to degree of fit and quality of core Brand” found that consumers perception

46

was similarity between core and extension is successful if there is a good fit between

core and the extension products. On the other hand a quality core product is not the

guarantee to successful brand extension to a product category which is not similar to

the core brand (distance brand extension). This product is limited only to one brand

and limited to students. So more successful brand extension and diverse consumer

categories are considered for future research is suggested.

2.2.4 Hakkyun K., Deborah R. J. (Jan. 2008) proposed the importance of perceived

fit in extension evaluations was moderated by construal level. Researcher drew upon

construal level theory, which posited that individuals can construe stimuli in their

environments in terms of abstract and generalized features (high-level construals) or

in terms of concrete and contextualized features (low-level construals). Results from

the study “Consumer response to brand extensions: Construal level as a

moderator of the importance of perceived fit” confirmed that consumers who

construed their environment at a higher level place more importance on perceived

extension fit in evaluating brand extensions. These consumers evaluated high fit

extensions more favorably than moderate fit extensions, consistent with prior

research. However, consumers who construed their environment at a lower level do

not evaluate high and moderate fit extensions any differently, unless the importance of

using fit perceptions is made salient.

2.2.5 UZTUG Ferruh (2008) focused on brand extension strategies in automotive

industry. Automotive industry had very different character than fast moving consumer

goods. Automotive industry used extension strategies for segmentation of vehicles.

For that reason in this paper, segmentation and line extension were described and

47

perception from automotive industry had shown. The comparisons of Turkish and

global markets were used. The extension had different types in automotive. There

were several types of extension; Commercial and Heavy Duty Vehicles, Industrial

Engines, Clothing and Gifts were some of the type of brand extension strategies in

automotive industry. However this research focused on brand extension in passenger

vehicles market. The study "Segmentation and Brand Extension in Automobile

Industry: Turkish vs Global" found that automotive companies which started

business from upper segments were willing to extend their products lines in global

markets. They did not differentiate their extension policy in different markets. As the

brand had strong roots in business it did not hesitate to extend its brand both in

product line and brand extension. However other brands which started business from

lower segments had drawback in different markets. They had different strategies for

different market in order to sustain high sales performance.

2.2.6 Busacca, Bruno (2008) examined the impact of brand relationship quality and

naming strategies on the success of brand extension through research based on an

experimental 2x2x2 design. The independent variables taken into consideration were:

the perceived fit between the products categories involved in the decision to expand;

the name chosen for the new product (predominance of the parent brand vs. sub-

brand); the level of brand relationship quality (high vs. low). The dependent variable

object of analysis was the consumer's evaluation of the expansion. The results of the

study "Consumer evaluations of brand extension: The impact of brand

relationship quality and naming strategy" showed that in the presence of high

brand relationship quality, the consumers value extension more favourably, no matter

what the level of category fit. However, in situations of high (low) category fit and

48

high brand relationship quality, the evaluation of the extension was better if the

predominance of the parent-brand (sub brand) was greater in the naming of the new

product. If the brand relationship quality was low, the consumer's evaluation was not

influenced by the naming strategies.

2.2.7 Thamaraiselvan N., Sivaram A. (2006) studied primarily focuses on how

consumers evaluated brand extensions for FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods)

and service product categories in Indian market conditions. It explored how exactly

the consumers evaluate different product categories based on factors like, similarity

fit, perceived quality, brand reputation and perceived risk. It brought out the impact of

brand reputation of the core brand and perceived service quality on the brand

extensions evaluations. It highlighted the role of perceived risk involved in the

extended product category in brand extensions evaluations. Most importantly, this

study established the relationships among similarity fit, brand reputation, perceived

service quality and perceived risk in extended product categories through appropriate

multivariate analysis and this study strengthens the assumption that the service quality

would enhance the reputation of the brand. The study "How do consumers evaluate

brand extension: - Research findings from India." looked into the features of

perceived risk and its impact on the brand extensions evaluations in the future studies.

This study also paved the way for researchers to do a similar kind of brand extensions

studies for the different categories of service sectors.

2.2.8 Van Riel, Allard C. R. (2005) investigated newly introduced service categories

on a portal site as e-service brand extensions. Electronic services were preliminarily

distinguished from traditional services, and factors are identified that enhance

49

consumer evaluations of e-service extensions. Findings confirmed the fundamentally

sound structure of the Aaker and Keller brand extension model for electronic services.

Only a limited number of studied have investigated the explicative factors of brand

extension success in the online context. The study on "Extending electronic portals

with new services: exploring the usefulness of brand extension models."

introduced the first study on brand extension applied to online services. It categorized

online services in four groups depended on the origin of the company (online or

physical) and the type of product that provided (tangible goods and traditional

services or virtual products). Van Riel and Ouwersloot, (2005) tested the model

proposed by Aaker and Keller, (1990) for each of the aforementioned types of e-

service providers, mentioned in the grid. They found that the variables of similarity,

perceived quality and difficulty of produced the extension help explain consumer

attitude towards online services extensions. Therefore, they concluded that consumers

perceive online extensions in a similar way to other product categories. Despite these

affirmations, the authors maintained that online services are subject to a more

complex evaluation mechanism than offline goods or services.

2.2.9 Hansen Havard, Hem Leif E. (2004) investigated the effects of characteristics

in the extension category. The purpose of this research was to explore the effects of

different characteristics of the extension category on the evaluation of brand

extensions. Based on the literature, it was suggested that at least five types of category

characteristics influence the evaluation of brand extensions: (a) bundling, (b) price

consciousness, (c) affective commitment, (d) involvement, and (e) perceived

knowledge of the extension category. It was also hypothesized as in past research that

similarity had a positive effect on brand extension evaluations. Data from a survey

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involve an established car brand extended to a service product-category was used to

test the relationships. The results of the study "Brand Extension Evaluations:

Effects of Affective Commitment, Involvement, Price Consciousness and

Preference for Bundling in the Extension Category " - Advances in Consumer

suggested that affective commitment towards the incumbent brand in the extension

category was negatively related to the intention to purchase the extension, and

involvement with the entry category increased purchase intention. Furthermore, price

consciousness had a positive effect on preference for product bundling, while

similarity and preference for bundling positively influences the intention to buy a

brand extension. The results underscored the importance of extension category

characteristics for consumer evaluation of extensions.

2.2.10 Leon Phang (September 2004) research examined whether business-to-

business brands can leverage their brands in the consumer market through brand

extensions and link theory from consumer branding to corporate branding. For

evaluating brand extensions hypotheses are tested by regression analysis on the basis

of brand knowledge, attitude towards parent brand, innovativeness, brand association,

perceived difficulty and perceptions of environmental concern. A new model was

developed by combining Aaker and Keller’s brand extension model with theories

from business-to-business branding as well as other consumer branding concepts, and

tested quantitatively to understand how consumer evaluate brand extensions. The

results of the study "Consumer Evaluations of Brand Extensions: Can B2B

Brands be Extended into the Consumer Market?" indicated that in the context of

business-to-business brand extensions, consumers used the transferability of skills and

resources, and brand concept consistency with the parent brand category as major

51

cues to evaluated extensions. Innovativeness and corporate social responsibility were

also relevant cues. As a consequence of these findings, branding strategies that stretch

business-to-business brands into the domain of consumer markets can be successful in

cases where consumers perceive a fit with respect to skills and resources, and brand

concept, and when the parent brand was perceived as being innovative and socially

responsible.

2.2.11 Jarlhem Manthana, Mihailescu Raluca (2003) intended to find consumers

perception of the parent brand and the extended brand’s personalities. The research

findings of the study "The study of consumer perception of the parent brand and

its extended brand personality - A case study” underlined an important point which

was that although consumers were the ones judged the brand and its extensions in

terms of expectations, perceptions and attitudes, it still was essential for the brand

managers to permanently managed the consumer’s brand knowledge structures by

strengthening the brand, strategy which would not only allow future growth

possibilities but also a shield against failed brand extensions. However, in the present

environment, the consumer’s brand relationship with the brands was eroding due to an

explosion of offers on the market. Strengthening a brand and permanently looking for

ways to achieve growth has never been more demanding.

2.2.12 Iversen Nina M., Leif E.Hem (September2001) explored the impact of

category similarity, brand reputation, perceived risk and consumer innovativeness on

the success of brand extensions in FMCG, durable goods and services sectors. A set of

hypotheses on the basis of perceived similarity, reputation, perceived risk and

innovativeness were developed and tested by multivariate analysis technique in a

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study amongst 701 consumers. The findings of the study “Factors influencing

successful brand extensions” showed that extensions into categories more similar to

the original brand tend to be more readily accepted. Likewise, the reputation of the

original brand was an important factor influencing the success of the extension. These

findings were consistent across FMCG, durable goods and services brands. However,

perceived risk about the extension category was only found to enhance acceptability

of extensions for durable goods and services brands. Innovative consumers were more

positively disposed towards service brand extensions than FMCG and durable goods

brand extensions.

2.2.13 Aaker, D. A. and Keller, K. L. (1990) conducted to obtain insights on how

consumers form attitudes toward brand extensions, (i.e., use of an established brand

name to enter a new product category). In one study of "Consumer evaluations of

brand extensions", reactions to 20 brand extension concepts involved six well-

known brand names were examined. Attitude toward the extension was higher when

there was both a perception of "fit" between the two product classes along one of

three dimensions and a perception of high quality for the original brand or the

extension was not regarded as too easy to make. A second study examined the

effectiveness of different positioning strategies for extensions. The experimental

findings showed that potentially negative associations can be neutralized more

effectively by elaborating on the attributes of the brand extension than by reminding

consumers of the positive associations with the original brand.

2.2.14 SERRA Elisabete study of extension had based on a quasi-experimental

methodology; this study identified the factors able to influence the perception of a

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brand extension as well as to isolate the processes on which the evaluation of the

brand extension was based on. This research work also explained the limits that the

evaluation of new products imposes on the brand extension strategy, and those

situations in which the introduction of brand extensions strengthen or weaken

consumer's beliefs towards the established brand. For the purpose of evaluating brand

extensions four brands i.e. Swatch, Rolex, Reebok and Adidas have taken and

hypotheses have been tasted on the basis of innovativeness and brand image. The

findings of the study “Brand Extensions : Evaluation and Reciprocal Effects”

showed that when the individuals recognize that there exists consistency between the

new product and the original product, based on innovativeness, its evaluation of the

extension is more positive then when no consistency exists between these product

categories and When the consumers recognize consistency between the beliefs

associated to the new product and those contained in the original brand, its evaluation

of the extension is more positive.

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Chapter-3:

Data Presentation &

Analysis

Brief Overview:

Data presentation is a critical portion of making proposals, reports and other essential

demonstrations during the course of daily meetings and important presentations. Most

presentations are either visual in nature or rely on strong visual elements for clarity

and information conveyance. Data presentation methods vary depending on the form

the data taken within the presentation. When using graphs to display information,

including items that list what each axis of the graph is meant to represent aids the

audience in immediate understanding, and does not require the speaker to field

constant questions about the basic message of the graph. On the other hand, data

presentation is the process of evaluating data using analytical and logical reasoning to

examine each component of the data provided. This form of analysis is just one of the

many steps that must be completed when conducting a research experiment. Data

from various sources is gathered, reviewed, and then analyzed to form some sort of

finding or conclusion. There are a variety of specific data analysis method, some of

which include data mining, text analytics, business intelligence, and data

visualizations.

This chapter “Data Representation and Analysis” has been divided in two parts, the

first one is data presentation which contains an analysis and presentation of the

demographic variables of the individuals from whom data was collected and the

second part of this chapter is concerned with the relationship among the variables are

discussed by means of correlation analysis. Then, a regression analysis is provided for

an aggregated model, with the aim of testing the proposed hypotheses. Afterwards,

regression results are discussed.

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3.1 Demographic Features

Demographic features incorporate four major aspects namely Gender, Age,

Qualification and Profession, which are discussed below one by one:

3.1.1 Demographic features: Gender

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative

Percent

Valid

1.00 65 65.0 65.0 65.0

2.00 35 35.0 35.0 100.0

Total 100 100.0 100.0

Table No-6: Percentage of Gender in Respondents

Figure No-3: Pie Chart of Percentage of Gender

Respondent Profile (Gender):

A total of 100 respondents were sampled which varied in age between 18 to 55+ years

57

old, 65% were male and 35% were female in Table 6. (1= male and 2 = female).

3.1.2 Demographic features: Age

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative

Percent

Valid

1.00 62 62.0 62.0 62.0

2.00 30 30.0 30.0 92.0

3.00 4 4.0 4.0 96.0

4.00 4 4.0 4.0 100.0

Total 100 100.0 100.0

Table No-7: Percentage Age Group

Figure No-4: Pie Chart of Percentage Age Group

Respondent Profile (Age):

In our survey most of the people (62%) were from 18-24 age groups, 30% were from

25-34 age groups, 4% were from both 35-45 and 45-55 age groups and no one was

from 55+ age groups. (Table No-7) That means our demographic of people were very

58

young. (1 indicates 18-24, 2 indicate 25-34, 3 indicate 35-45, 4 indicate 45-55 and 5

indicate 55+).

3.1.3 Demographic features: Qualification

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative

Percent

Valid

1.00 12 12.0 12.0 12.0

2.00 37 37.0 37.0 49.0

3.00 51 51.0 51.0 100.0

Total 100 100.0 100.0

Table No-8: Qualification of Respondents

Figure No-5: Pie Chart of Qualified Respondents

Respondent Profile (Qualification):

59

In terms of level of education, the most important groups were Postgraduate school

51% and Graduate 37% from table no. 8 (1= Undergraduate, 2= Graduate, 3= Post

Graduate/PhD, 4= Any Other).

3.1.4 Demographic features: Profession

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative

Percent

Valid

1.00 60 60.0 60.0 60.0

2.00 25 25.0 25.0 85.0

3.00 8 8.0 8.0 93.0

4.00 6 6.0 6.0 99.0

5.00 1 1.0 1.0 100.0

Total 100 100.0 100.0

Table No-9: Percentage of Profession Respondents

Figure No-6: Pie Chart of Profession Respondents

Respondent Profile (Professions):

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In terms of profession of people, most of the groups were students 60% and full time

employed 25% from table 9. (1= student, 2= Full time employed, 3= Part time

employed, 4= Self employed, 5= unemployed, 6= others).

3.2 Correlation Analysis

A Correlation Analysis identifies how variables in the conceptual model relate to each

other. The below given table is a Correlation Analysis table which has been used to

analyze the relationship between some important variables of Brand extension.

Correlations

ATT CIN PS BLO PQ BK

ATT Pearson Correlation 1

Sig. (2-tailed)

N 100

CIN Pearson Correlation .227* 1

Sig. (2-tailed) .023

N 100 100

PS Pearson Correlation .756** .472** 1

Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000

N 100 100 100

BLO Pearson Correlation .150 .426** .109 1

Sig. (2-tailed) .137 .000 .279

N 100 100 100 100

PQ Pearson Correlation .264** .326** .213* .529** 1

Sig. (2-tailed) .008 .001 .033 .000

N 100 100 100 100 100

BK Pearson Correlation .201* .171 .406** .015 .369** 1

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Sig. (2-tailed) .045 .089 .000 .881 .000

N 100 100 100 100 100 100

*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Table No-10: Correlations

Interpretation:

The correlation coefficients which are shown in Table No-10 (Appendix 2) prove that

all variables have a positive relationship to attitude towards the extension except

brand loyalty, particular Perceived Similarity i.e. PS (0.756), Consumer

Innovativeness i.e. CIN (0.227), Perceived Quality i.e. PQ (0.264) and Brand

Knowledge i.e. BK (0.201). Brand Loyalty whose Pearson Correlation is 0.150 and

significance level (p) is 0.137 (which is greater than 0.05), which means brand loyalty

is not significantly correlated with attitude towards extension of Google Inc.

Furthermore, a strong relationship is shown in the case of Consumer innovativeness

and perceived similarity (0.472**). On the other hand, Brand loyalty is also strongly

related to perceived quality (0.529**) which supports the idea that perceive quality and

trust in the online brand help increase consumer e-loyalty and there is very weak

relationship of Brand Knowledge to Attitude towards extension of Google Inc. It also

shows that Brand Knowledge is not very significantly related to Brand Extension and

it will not impact on Extension of Google Inc. This study also shows that there is no

relationship between Brand Loyalty and Brand Knowledge, because there significance

level is 0.881, which is greater than 0.05. Furthermore there is also no relationship

between Brand Knowledge and Consumer Innovativeness because there significance

level is greater than 0.05 and Brand Loyalty (BL) and Perceived Similarity (PS).

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Analysis:

The analysis above reflects that consumer evaluate brand extension on factors like

Consumer Innovativeness, Perceived Similarity, Perceived Quality and Brand

Knowledge. Because these factors highly influence consumers when they consider

online brand extension. On the other hand Brand Loyalty is not correlated with

Attitude towards extension, because consumers are not brand loyal at all.

3.3 Regression Analysis

The study employed regression analysis in order to test the followings hypotheses:

H1: Consumer knowledge of the online brand, original product category and offline

extension category has positive effects on the extension evaluation.

H2 Higher quality perceptions toward the original online brand are associated with

more favourable attitudes toward the offline extension.

H3 Online brand loyalty has a positive effect on consumer attitude towards the offline

brand extension launched by online companies.

H4: The overall perceived similarity between the online parent brand and the

extension has a positive effect on consumer attitude toward the offline extension.

H5: Consumers with a high degree of innovativeness will evaluate more positively

offline brand extensions from Internet brands.

3.3.1 Variables Entered in regression Analysis

Variables Entered/Removeda

Mode

l

Variables

Entered

Variables

Removed

Method

63

1 BK, BLO,

PS, CIN, PQb

. Enter

a. Dependent Variable: ATT

b. All requested variables entered.

Table No-11: Variables

The Table No- 11 simply provides a list of the variables used in the calculation. The

entry, removal, and method columns apply to certain automatic model fitting

procedures. This table clearly shows Dependent Variables i.e. ATT and Independent

Variables i.e. BK, BLO, PS, CIN and PQ.

3.3.2 Regression Model Summary

Model R R Square Adjusted R

Square

Std. Error of

the Estimate

1 .806a .649 .630 1.36291

a. Predictors: (Constant), BK, BLO, PS, CIN, PQ

Table No-12: Regression Model Summary

Analysis:

R Square provides an indication of the explanatory power of the regression model. R-

Square is simply the percentage of variance in the dependent variable explained by the

collection of independent variables. In this case, it’s about 64.9%. Regression was

also conducted at a brand level in order to assess the effects of the independent

variables on attitude towards extension when different types of online brands are

involved. The proposed model explains 65% of the attitude towards the extension for

Google.

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Interpretation:

Higher dependability reflected from the analysis can be interpreted in the way that

prediction of attitude towards extension on independent variables. This clearly

indicates that brand loyalty, brand knowledge, perceived quality, perceived similarity

and consumer innovativeness has a greater impact on attitude towards extension.

3.3.3 Anova

Model Sum of Squares Df Mean Square F Sig.

1

Regression 322.752 5 64.550 34.751 .000b

Residual 174.608 94 1.858

Total 497.360 99

a. Dependent Variable: ATT

b. Predictors: (Constant), BK, BLO, PS, CIN, PQ

Table No-13: ANOVAa

Analysis:

The term “Sig.’ in SPSS refers to a significance test, which is another way of saying

“Statistical hypothesis test”. In other words, numbers in columns labelled “Sig.” are p-

values and therefore given the results of a hypothesis test. In this case, the p-values

refer to a test of the entire model (i.e. the entire collections of independent variables)

as a whole. If the p value is greater than 0.05 then accept the null that none of the

independents predict the dependent. This means that the model is a bust and we

should go no further. In this study the computed F-statistic is 34.751 for regression,

which are significant at p=0.000 (Table No-13).

Interpretation:

65

From the above analysis it can be reflects that the study is feasible enough because the

significance level (p) is less than 0.05 and some of the independents predicts the

dependent. It can be due to high reliability of the questionnaire which is greater than

0.7.

3.3.4 Coefficients

Coefficientsa

Model Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized

Coefficients

T Sig.

B Std. Error Beta

1 (Constant) -1.323 1.998 -.662 .509

CIN -.291 .087 -.257 -3.342 .001

PS 1.138 .094 .908 12.093 .000

BLO .110 .145 .060 .763 .447

PQ .300 .123 .194 2.434 .017

BK -.343 .127 -.196 -2.696 .008

a. Dependent Variable: ATT

Table No-14: Cofficientsa

Analysis:

These are regression coefficients. While we do not count the “Constant” among the

independent variables, we do not count its coefficient as part of the regression

equation estimated in this output. The coefficient for the constant is the value for the

Y-intercept, b0. These values are used to calculate the possible attitude towards the

extension. In our study significance level of Brand Loyalty (0.447) is greater than

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0.05 (Table No-14), which means Brand Loyalty is not at all supported for evaluating

attitude towards extensions for Google Inc. On the other hand Brand Knowledge and

Consumer Innovativeness are also not supported for extension evaluation for Google

Inc, because of negative values.

Interpretation:

From the above analysis it can be interpreted that, Consumer Innovativeness, Brand

Loyalty and Brand Knowledge is not supported because consumers are not brand

loyal to products of Google Inc, and there is no need of brand awareness & brand

knowledge while consider brand extension of offline products. Moreover consumers

are not innovative enough to buy new products with new features and they never

associate offline extension to the parent brand. Which means first hypothesis i.e. H1

(Brand knowledge), third hypothesis i.e. H3 (Brand Loyalty), and fifth hypothesis i.e.

H5 (Consumer Innovativeness) are rejected and null hypothesis is accepted. On the

other hand Perceived Quality and Perceived Similarity are an important factor while

evaluating brand extension because consumers perceive similar products and quality

of existing products so, there hypotheses H2 and H4 are significant and supported

while evaluating brand extension.

The equation form this output is:

ATT= -1.323 - (0.291×INN) + (1.138×PS) + (0.110×BL) + (0.300×PQ) – (0.343× BKN) +2.205

3.3 Hypotheses Testing

Hypothesis Variable Google Inc.

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H1 BK Not Supported

H2 PQ Supported

H3 BLO Not Supported

H4 PS Supported

H5 CIN Not Supported

Table No-15: Review of Hypotheses

In above equation Brand Knowledge (BK), Brand Loyalty (BLO) and Consumer

Innovativeness (CIN) have no significant on attitude towards extension (ATT) of

Google Inc, bbecause significance level of Brand Loyalty is 0.447 and the value of

CIN and BK is in negative. On the other hand only 2 variables Perceived Quality (PQ)

and Perceived Similarity (PS) have significant on attitude towards extension of

Google Inc, because significance level of both are less than 0.05 and values are in

positive.

3.4.1 Brand Knowledge

The beta coefficient related to brand knowledge (BK) appear to be no significant at

any level of significance (p>0.1) and negative (0.196), therefore the first hypothesis

(H1) is rejected. Thus, consumer knowledge of the online brand, original product

category and offline extension category has negative effect on the extension

evaluation.

3.4.2 Perceived Quality

From the regression analysis Perceived Quality (PQ) appears to be significant at any

level, because the value of beta coefficient is in positive i.e. 0.908 and significance

68

level is less than 0.05. So, hypothesis H2 is accepted towards brand extension of

Google Inc, and perceived quality is an important variable while evaluating Brand

extension of Google Inc. Thus, higher quality perceptions toward the original online

brand and associated with more favourable attitudes towards the offline extensions.

3.4.3 Brand Loyalty

From the regression analysis brand loyalty (BLO) is found no significant at any level

p>0.1 for Google Inc which is 0.447, and H3 is therefore rejected. So, Brand Loyalty

has no any significance while evaluating brand extension of Google Inc. Thus, online

brand loyalty has a negative effect on consumer attitude towards the offline brand

extension launched by online companies.

3.4.4 Perceived Similarity

From the regression analysis Perceived Similarity (PS) appears to be significant at any

level, because the value of beta coefficient is in positive i.e. 0.194 and significance

level is 0.017 which is less than 0.05. So, hypothesis H4 is accepted towards brand

extension of Google Inc, and perceived similarity is also an important variable while

evaluating Brand extension of Google Inc. Thus, the overall perceived similarity

between the online parent brand and the extension has a positive effect on consumer

attitude towards the offline extensions.

3.4.5 Consumer Innovativeness

Beta coefficient related to Consumer Innovativeness (CIN) also appear to be no

significant whose negative value is 0.257, therefore the fifth hypothesis (H5) is also

rejected. So consumer innovativeness is not an important factor while evaluating

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brand extension of Google Inc. Thus, consumers with a high degree of innovativeness

will evaluate negatively offline brand extensions from internet brands.

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Chapter-4:

Summary & Conclusions

A total of 100 respondents were sampled which varied in age between 18 to 55+ years

old, most of the population were male. In terms of level of education, the most

important groups were postgraduate school.

In the light of the results presented in the regressions and correlations analysis, certain

findings can be drawn:

Brand knowledge, perceived similarity, perceived quality and consumer

innovativeness are strongly correlated with the attitude towards extension. On

the other hand brand loyalty is an unrelated variable.

The value of R-square i.e. regression is quite high which shows that there is

greater impact on dependent variable (ATT).

From the significance level of Anova it can be found out that there is

relevance of variables (Brand Knowledge, Perceived Similarity, Brand

Loyalty, Perceived Quality and Consumer Innovativeness) within the model.

Brand knowledge does not present a significant effect on attitude towards the

extension. So, consumers may perceive these extensions as typical or

unrealistic.

The result shows that there is a significance of perceived quality (PQ) on

attitude towards the extension when an online brand is extended to offline

products. Therefore, the impact of perceived quality is its strength.

There is no significance of brand loyalty within the model over attitude

towards extension.

The study showed that perceived similarity is considered significant within the

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model. Thus importance of overall similarity within the model is in line with

previous studies which considered it as the most important predicting factor of

attitude towards extensions.

Based on results of the analysis it can be said that Product similarity is a

significant determinant of brand extension success for Google. This explains

that consumers evaluate more favourably those offline extensions which

present complementarily with the product of the parent brand and use the same

competences.

Consumer Innovativeness (CIN) does not present a significant effect on

attitude towards the extension.

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4.1 Conclusion

The marketers spent a lot of time and energy in creatively positioning brand

extensions to overcome high risks associated with new product launch. The

importance of brands is not only measured in terms of the competitive advantages that

they provide in their present markets but also the future opportunities that they

provide in untapped markets. This way, firms can enter new markets by using an

existing, well-known brand name in order to reduce both the cost of launching new

products and the risk of product failure.

The study attempts to provide a better understanding of the factors that influence

consumer’s evaluations of brand extensions in the context of online brands and, in

particular, when these extensions are launched away from the Internet limits towards

offline markets. The findings of this study suggested that the launching of offline

brand extensions by online companies is indeed possible. More specifically, this study

showed that consumers employ brand personality and perceptions of quality rather

than brand loyalty and brand knowledge in order to evaluate the new offline

extensions. Furthermore, this study seems to follow the line of previous research by

supporting the role of product similarity as predictor of brand extension success. On

the other hand, perceived similarity by the parent brand to the offline extension

creates more positive consumer attitudes towards the extension as it is demonstrated

in this study.

In nutshell, the success of online brands extensions will depend on the positive brand

personality, perceived quality and perceived similarity to build a strong and positive

brand.

73

4.2 Limitations

The methodology that has been employed might have a few limitations.

The study examined one brand which is Google, which is one of the categories

of e-portals online brands. However some other categories like that of e-

tailers, e-sellers and company portal were not studied.

In this study only two offline extensions i.e. Android and Google Nexus were

investigated for company. Apart from that the study only focused on five factors

or variables which affect the brand extension evaluation by consumers but there

are many more factors which affect the evaluation of brand extension.

The study only assessed the direct relationships between the determinants of

brand extension success and consumer attitude toward the extension.

The study consists in a cross-sectional analysis of the collected data. However, the

utilized variables were not statics.

This study may not fully capture consumer’s attitudes toward the extension across

time.

The sample size is very small due to limited available time.

Number of male respondents were more than the female respondents this may

affect the interpretation of the results.

74

4.3 Scope for further Study

This study presents several ways in which it can be extended. Possible interactions

between explicative variables may help improve the understanding of consumer’s

evaluations of the extensions. In this way, variables such as brand loyalty or brand

knowledge that appeared to be not significant within the model may play an important

role when they interact with other explicative variables. More specifically, it would be

interesting to investigate the interaction effects between brand loyalty and brand

knowledge. Therefore, further research should investigate the existence of relationships

between the proposed determinants of brand extension success. As already mentioned,

this study only examined one brand categories of online brands of Google Inc. (e-portals)

which stops results from being generalized. Therefore, further research should extend this

research to the study of a broader number of companies in each category in order to

generalize the findings to other e-portals.

75

Chapter-5:

Recommendations

Based on the researcher’s experience, limitations and analysis of the study, some

recommendations can be laid down for the company while launching offline products

into the market:

Based on findings from analysis:

The company should consider brand knowledge, perceived quality, brand

loyalty, perceived similarity and consumer innovativeness when they go for

extension of their brand because these factors have a very strong relationship

among them.

The managers of online brands should decide the right kind of product that is to

be extended as there is a significant role of product similarity on consumer’s

evaluations of the extensions.

Google should give attractive offers and discounts for increasing brand

awareness and brand loyalty on the products and start loyalty program for the

consumers who repurchase their products.

The company should focus on making quality products as it has a big role in

developing attitude of customers.

Based on experience while conducting the study:

The study considers only a few factors like brand knowledge, perceived

similarity, brand loyalty, perceived quality and consumer innovativeness.

Other factors like brand association, consumer involvement, market support

and brand value can also be considered while going for extension.

Company should associate their product with the brand image of the company.

77

Google Inc never launched its offline product, like Google Nexus from its own

manufacturing house. As such it is difficult for the consumers to associate brand

with the product.

Company should always launch its offline products with its brand name, which

will give a strong brand association and product similarity for the consumers.

The new products of Google must have perceived similarity to the current

products. For this purpose, managers should select offline extensions which

enable Internet access and can be used together with the products of the brand.

The study shows that perceived quality and perceived similarity are the

important factors when a company goes for extension. So, the company should

focus on these two factors whenever they go for extensions.

For brand loyalty company should go for wider and further study. Because

brand loyalty has a significant role in brand extension.

For brand awareness Google should launch and advertise their offline products

to tap a larger share of the Indian market. This would help the consumers to

easily identify their offline products.

78

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Alam M. S, Faruq Sharmin (Dec. 2010), “Evaluation of Brand Extension (Similar and

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Mihailescu, Raluca, Järlhem, Manthana (2004), “The study of consumer perception of

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Books

Success Factors of Brand Extension in International Marketing

By Carolin Wobben

Handbook on Brand and Experience Management

By B. H. Schmitt, David L. Rogers

Brand Positioning: Strategies for Competitive Advantage

By Subroto Sengupta

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February 2013]

81

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_extension [Last accessed as on Monday, 04th

February 2013]

http://www.mba-tutorials.com/strategy/307-top-vision-statements.html [Last accessed

as on Monday, 04th February 2013]

http://www.managementstudyguide.com/brand-extension.htm [Last accessed on as

Thursday, 07th February 2013]

http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/4e4ab3ca6bb3f7092f00002e-590-568/

google-timeline.jpg [Last accessed as on Friday, 22th February 2013]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_productsen.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Online_advertising. [Last accessed as on Wednesday, 27th February 2013]

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17th March 2013]

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Tuesday, 2nd April 2013]

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[Last accessed as on Wednesday, 6th March 2013]

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others-are-just-awkward/ [Last accessed as on Sunday, 10th March 2013]

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en-us-x-none.html [Last accessed as on Thursday, 21th March 2013]

82

Appendix

Appendix 1: Reliability Analysis

Case Processing Summary

N %

Cases

Valid 100 100.0

Excludeda 0 .0

Total 100 100.0

a. Listwise deletion based on all variables in the

procedure.

Reliability Statistics

Cronbach's

Alpha

N of Items

.726 6

Appendix 2: Correlations

Correlations

ATT INN PS BL PQ BKN

ATT

Pearson Correlation 1 .227* .756** .150 .264** .201*

Sig. (2-tailed) .023 .000 .137 .008 .045

N 100 100 100 100 100 100

INN

Pearson Correlation .227* 1 .472** .426** .326** .171

Sig. (2-tailed) .023 .000 .000 .001 .089

N 100 100 100 100 100 100

PS

Pearson Correlation .756** .472** 1 .109 .213* .406**

Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .279 .033 .000

N 100 100 100 100 100 100

BL

Pearson Correlation .150 .426** .109 1 .529** .015

Sig. (2-tailed) .137 .000 .279 .000 .881

N 100 100 100 100 100 100

PQ

Pearson Correlation .264** .326** .213* .529** 1 .369**

Sig. (2-tailed) .008 .001 .033 .000 .000

N 100 100 100 100 100 100

BKN

Pearson Correlation .201* .171 .406** .015 .369** 1

Sig. (2-tailed) .045 .089 .000 .881 .000

N 100 100 100 100 100 100

*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

84

Appendix 3: Frequencies

Statistics

ATT INN PS BL PQ BKN

N

Valid 100 100 100 100 100 100

Missing 0 0 0 0 0 0

Mean 10.9200 10.6000 13.0100 12.3300 12.1200 13.0200

Std. Error of Mean .22414 .19797 .17894 .12231 .14514 .12790

Std. Deviation 2.24139 1.97969 1.78939 1.22314 1.45144 1.27905

Variance 5.024 3.919 3.202 1.496 2.107 1.636

Range 8.00 8.00 7.00 5.00 5.00 4.00

Minimum 6.00 7.00 9.00 10.00 10.00 11.00

Maximum 14.00 15.00 16.00 15.00 15.00 15.00

Sum 1092.00 1060.00 1301.00 1233.00 1212.00 1302.00

Appendix 4: Word Count

85

Appendix 5: Excel Sheet

  1 2 6BK 3 4 5

PQ 7 8 9

BL

10

11

12

13

PS

14

15

16

CNN

17

18

19

ATT

R1 5 4 312 4 4 4

12 5 4 5

14 4 2 3 4

13 4 2 3 9 2 4 3 9

R2 5 4 413 5 4 4

13 4 5 4

13 4 3 3 4

14 5 5 4 14 4 3 4 11

R3 4 4 311 4 4 4

12 4 5 5

14 4 3 3 4

14 4 4 4 12 4 4 5 13

R4 4 3 411 3 4 3

10 3 3 4

10 3 4 3 3

13 4 3 4 11 2 3 4 9

R5 5 4 514 4 4 4

12 4 5 5

14 4 4 3 3

14 4 4 4 12 4 4 4 12

R6 5 4 413 4 4 4

12 4 4 4

12 3 3 3 3

12 3 4 3 10 4 4 4 12

R7 5 3 311 3 4 4

11 4 4 4

12 2 2 3 4

11 4 3 4 11 3 3 3 9

R8 5 4 211 3 4 4

11 3 5 5

13 2 2 3 2 9 3 1 3 7 4 3 2 9

R9 5 4 514 4 4 3

11 3 4 4

11 4 3 3 4

14 4 2 3 9 4 4 4 12

R10 5 5 4

14 4 4 3

11 3 4 4

11 2 3 3 3

11 4 3 2 9 2 2 2 6

R11 5 4 4

13 5 5 5

15 4 4 4

12 3 4 3 3

13 2 2 4 8 4 4 4 12

R12 5 5 4

14 4 4 5

13 4 4 5

13 3 4 4 4

15 4 5 4 13 5 4 4 13

R13 5 5 5

15 4 4 4

12 4 4 5

13 4 4 4 3

15 4 4 3 11 4 4 5 13

R14 4 4 5

13 3 4 4

11 4 4 4

12 4 4 4 3

15 3 3 3 9 4 5 4 13

R15 4 3 4

11 4 4 4

12 4 4 4

12 4 3 3 2

12 3 5 4 12 4 3 4 11

R16 4 4 5

13 4 4 4

12 4 4 5

13 4 4 4 3

15 3 4 4 11 5 4 5 14

R17 5 5 5

15 5 5 5

15 5 4 4

13 3 3 2 4

12 4 3 4 11 4 4 3 11

R18 5 4 4

13 4 3 4

11 4 3 4

11 4 4 4 4

16 4 3 4 11 5 4 4 13

R19 4 4 5

13 4 4 3

11 4 4 3

11 2 3 3 2

10 4 3 3 10 3 2 2 7

R20 5 5 4

14 5 5 5

15 5 5 5

15 3 3 4 4

14 5 5 5 15 3 3 4 10

R21 5 4 3

12 4 4 4

12 5 4 5

14 4 2 3 4

13 4 2 3 9 2 4 3 9

R22 5 4 4

13 5 4 4

13 4 5 4

13 4 3 3 4

14 5 5 4 14 4 3 4 11

R23 4 4 3

11 4 4 4

12 4 5 5

14 4 3 3 4

14 4 4 4 12 4 4 5 13

R24 4 3 4

11 3 4 3

10 3 3 4

10 3 4 3 3

13 4 3 4 11 2 3 4 9

R25 5 4 5

14 4 4 4

12 4 5 5

14 4 4 3 3

14 4 4 4 12 4 4 4 12

R26 5 4 4

13 4 4 4

12 4 4 4

12 3 3 3 3

12 3 4 3 10 4 4 4 12

R27 5 3 3

11 3 4 4

11 4 4 4

12 2 2 3 4

11 4 3 4 11 3 3 3 9

R28 5 4 2

11 3 4 4

11 3 5 5

13 2 2 3 2 9 3 1 3 7 4 3 2 9

R29 5 4 5

14 4 4 3

11 3 4 4

11 4 3 3 4

14 4 2 3 9 4 4 4 12

R30 5 5 4

14 4 4 3

11 5 4 2

11 2 3 3 3

11 4 3 2 9 2 2 2 6

R31 5 4 4

13 5 5 5

15 4 4 4

12 3 4 3 3

13 2 2 4 8 4 4 4 12

R32 5 5 4

14 4 4 5

13 4 4 5

13 3 4 4 4

15 4 5 4 13 5 4 4 13

R33 5 5 5

15 4 4 4

12 4 4 3

11 4 4 4 3

15 4 4 3 11 4 4 5 13

R34 4 4 5

13 3 4 4

11 4 4 4

12 4 4 2 3

13 3 3 3 9 4 5 4 13

R3 4 3 4 1 4 4 4 1 4 4 4 1 4 3 3 2 1 3 5 4 12 4 3 4 11

86

5 1 2 2 2R36 4 4 5

13 4 4 4

12 4 4 5

13 4 4 2 3

13 3 4 4 11 5 4 5 14

R37 5 5 5

15 5 5 5

15 5 4 4

13 3 3 2 4

12 4 3 4 11 4 4 3 11

R38 5 4 4

13 4 3 4

11 4 3 4

11 4 4 4 4

16 4 3 4 11 5 4 4 13

R39 4 4 5

13 4 4 3

11 4 4 3

11 2 3 3 2

10 4 3 3 10 3 2 2 7

R40 5 5 4

14 5 5 5

15 5 5 5

15 3 3 4 4

14 5 5 5 15 3 3 4 10

R41 5 4 5

14 4 4 3

11 3 3 4

10 4 3 3 4

14 4 2 3 9 4 4 4 12

R42 5 5 4

14 4 4 3

11 3 4 5

12 2 3 3 3

11 4 3 2 9 2 2 2 6

R43 5 4 4

13 5 5 5

15 4 4 4

12 3 4 3 3

13 2 2 4 8 4 4 4 12

R44 5 5 4

14 4 4 5

13 4 4 5

13 3 4 4 4

15 4 5 4 13 5 4 4 13

R45 5 5 5

15 4 4 4

12 4 4 3

11 4 4 4 3

15 4 4 3 11 4 4 5 13

R46 4 4 5

13 3 4 4

11 4 4 4

12 4 4 4 3

15 3 3 3 9 4 5 4 13

R47 4 3 4

11 4 4 4

12 4 4 4

12 4 3 3 2

12 3 5 4 12 4 3 4 11

R48 4 4 5

13 4 4 4

12 4 4 5

13 4 4 4 3

15 3 4 4 11 5 4 5 14

R49 5 5 5

15 5 5 5

15 5 4 4

13 3 3 2 4

12 4 3 4 11 4 4 3 11

R50 5 4 4

13 4 3 4

11 4 3 4

11 4 4 4 4

16 4 3 4 11 5 4 4 13

R51 4 4 5

13 4 4 3

11 4 4 3

11 2 3 3 2

10 4 3 3 10 3 2 2 7

R52 5 5 4

14 5 5 5

15 5 5 5

15 3 3 4 4

14 5 5 5 15 3 3 4 10

R53 5 4 3

12 4 4 4

12 5 4 5

14 4 2 3 4

13 4 2 3 9 2 4 3 9

R54 5 4 4

13 5 4 4

13 4 5 4

13 4 3 3 4

14 5 5 4 14 4 3 4 11

R55 4 4 3

11 4 4 4

12 4 5 5

14 4 3 3 4

14 4 4 4 12 4 4 5 13

R56 4 3 4

11 3 4 3

10 3 3 4

10 3 4 3 3

13 4 3 4 11 2 3 4 9

R57 5 4 5

14 4 4 4

12 4 5 5

14 4 4 3 3

14 4 4 4 12 4 4 4 12

R58 5 4 4

13 4 4 4

12 4 4 4

12 3 3 3 3

12 3 4 3 10 4 4 4 12

R59 5 3 3

11 3 4 4

11 4 4 4

12 2 2 3 4

11 4 3 4 11 3 3 3 9

R60 5 4 2

11 3 4 4

11 3 5 5

13 2 2 3 2 9 3 1 3 7 4 3 2 9

R61 5 4 5

14 4 4 3

11 4 3 4

11 4 3 3 4

14 4 2 3 9 4 4 4 12

R62 5 5 4

14 4 4 3

11 3 4 4

11 2 3 3 3

11 4 3 2 9 2 2 2 6

R63 5 4 4

13 5 5 5

15 4 4 4

12 3 4 3 3

13 2 2 4 8 4 4 4 12

R64 5 5 4

14 4 4 5

13 4 4 5

13 3 4 4 4

15 4 5 4 13 5 4 4 13

R65 5 5 5

15 4 4 4

12 4 4 3

11 4 4 4 3

15 4 4 3 11 4 4 5 13

R66 4 4 5

13 3 4 4

11 4 4 4

12 4 4 2 3

13 3 3 3 9 4 5 4 13

R67 4 4 5

13 4 4 3

11 4 4 3

11 2 3 3 2

10 4 3 3 10 3 2 2 7

R68 5 5 4

14 5 5 5

15 5 5 5

15 3 3 4 4

14 5 5 5 15 3 3 4 10

R69 5 4 3

12 4 4 4

12 5 4 5

14 4 2 3 4

13 4 2 3 9 2 4 3 9

R70 5 4 4

13 5 4 4

13 4 5 4

13 4 3 3 4

14 5 5 4 14 4 3 4 11

R71 4 4 3

11 4 4 4

12 4 5 5

14 4 3 3 4

14 4 4 4 12 4 4 5 13

R7 4 3 4 1 3 4 3 1 3 3 4 1 3 4 3 3 1 4 3 4 11 2 3 4 9

87

2 1 0 0 3R73 5 4 5

14 4 4 4

12 4 5 5

14 4 4 3 3

14 4 4 4 12 4 4 4 12

R74 5 4 4

13 4 4 4

12 4 4 4

12 3 3 3 3

12 3 4 3 10 4 4 4 12

R75 5 3 3

11 3 4 4

11 4 4 4

12 2 2 3 4

11 4 3 4 11 3 3 3 9

R76 5 4 2

11 3 4 4

11 3 5 5

13 2 2 3 2 9 3 1 3 7 4 3 2 9

R77 5 4 5

14 4 4 3

11 5 3 4

12 4 3 3 4

14 4 2 3 9 4 4 4 12

R78 5 5 4

14 4 4 3

11 3 4 5

12 2 3 3 3

11 4 3 2 9 2 2 2 6

R79 5 4 4

13 5 5 5

15 4 4 4

12 3 4 3 3

13 2 2 4 8 4 4 4 12

R80 5 5 4

14 4 4 5

13 4 4 5

13 3 4 4 4

15 4 5 4 13 5 4 4 13

R81 5 5 5

15 4 4 4

12 4 4 3

11 4 4 4 3

15 4 4 3 11 4 4 5 13

R82 4 4 5

13 3 4 4

11 4 4 4

12 4 4 2 3

13 3 3 3 9 4 5 4 13

R83 4 3 4

11 4 4 4

12 4 4 4

12 4 3 3 2

12 3 5 4 12 4 3 4 11

R84 4 4 5

13 4 4 4

12 4 4 5

13 4 4 2 3

13 3 4 4 11 5 4 5 14

R85 5 5 5

15 5 5 5

15 5 4 4

13 3 3 2 4

12 4 3 4 11 4 4 3 11

R86 5 4 4

13 4 3 4

11 4 3 4

11 4 4 4 4

16 4 3 4 11 5 4 4 13

R87 4 4 5

13 4 4 3

11 4 4 3

11 2 3 3 2

10 4 3 3 10 3 2 2 7

R88 5 5 4

14 5 5 5

15 5 5 5

15 3 3 4 4

14 5 5 5 15 3 3 4 10

R89 5 4 5

14 4 4 3

11 5 3 4

12 4 3 3 4

14 4 2 3 9 4 4 4 12

R90 5 5 4

14 4 4 3

11 3 4 5

12 2 3 3 3

11 4 3 2 9 2 2 2 6

R91 5 4 4

13 5 5 5

15 4 4 4

12 3 4 3 3

13 2 2 4 8 4 4 4 12

R92 5 5 4

14 4 4 5

13 4 4 5

13 3 4 4 4

15 4 5 4 13 5 4 4 13

R93 5 5 5

15 4 4 4

12 4 4 3

11 4 4 4 3

15 4 4 3 11 4 4 5 13

R94 4 4 5

13 3 4 4

11 4 4 4

12 4 4 4 3

15 3 3 3 9 4 5 4 13

R95 5 3 3

11 3 4 4

11 4 4 4

12 2 2 3 4

11 4 3 4 11 3 3 3 9

R96 5 4 2

11 3 4 4

11 3 5 5

13 2 2 3 2 9 3 1 3 7 4 3 2 9

R97 5 4 5

14 4 4 3

11 4 3 4

11 4 3 3 4

14 4 2 3 9 4 4 4 12

R98 5 5 4

14 4 4 3

11 3 4 5

12 2 3 3 3

11 4 3 2 9 2 2 2 6

R99 5 4 4

13 5 5 5

15 4 4 4

12 3 4 3 3

13 2 2 4 8 4 4 4 12

R100 5 5 4

14 4 4 5

13 4 4 5

13 3 4 4 4

15 4 5 4 13 5 4 4 13

88

Annexure

QUESTIONNAIRE

As a part of MBA program a survey is conducting on variables affecting brand

extension evaluation for the respondents who have used Google online services and

are aware of their offline products extension.

Name: ____________________

Gender: a) Male b) Female

Age: 18-24 25-34 35-45 45-55 55+

Qualification: Undergraduate Graduate

Post Graduate/Ph.D. Specify, if any other __________

Profession: Student Full time employed Part time employed

Self employed Unemployed Others

Consider the following brand:

For the next several questions, please choose a number from 1-5 to each statement to

indicate how much you agree with that statement.

Preference Statements

Non Familiar……….Very Familiar

1 2 3 4 5

1. Are you familiar to the brand Google?

2. Are you familiar with the products offered by Google?

90

Preference Statements

Strongly Disagree…Strongly Agree

1 2 3 4 5

3. Google offers very good quality products.

4. Google offers products of consistent quality.

5. Google offers products with excellent features.

6. I use frequently Google products or services.

Preference Statements

Strongly Disagree…Strongly Agree

1 2 3 4 5

7. It makes sense use Google's products or services instead of other competing companies, even if they are the same.8. Even if other company has the same features as Google's products or services, I would prefer use Google. 9. I would definitely recommend Google to friends, neighbours and relatives.

Consider the following extension:

a) Google Smartphone b) Smartphone's and Tablet's Software

Preference Statements

Not Very Similar……....Highly Similar

1 2 3 4 5

10. Think of Google. How similar is the typical usage situation of Google's products with the usage of mobile phones? 11. Think of Google. How similar is Google compared with mobile phones regarding image?

12. Think of Google. How similar is the competence required to produce Google products and mobile phones? Strongly Disagree……..Strongly

Agree

91

Preference Statements

1 2 3 4 5

13. There is complementarily of Google's products and services and mobile phones. 14. Overall, I enjoy buying the latest products.

15. I like to purchase the latest products before others do.16. Overall, it is exciting to buy the latest products.

17. Overall, I am very positive to Google mobile phone. 18. I am likely to try Google smartphone.

19. Overall evaluation of Google smartphone relative to existing brands in mobile phones category.

92