Discovering brand meaning: Deriving the domains of a sub-brand

Due to the high rate of new product failures (Evanschitzky et al., 2012), new products are increasingly introduced to the market using a sub-branding approach (e.g., Sony PlayStation), which involves combining an established company's name with another name in an existing or a different product category to develop a product or service that has its own brand identity in terms of a given market segment. Although the notion of sub-branding is advanced in the literature (Rahman et al., 2009), what is missing is the sources of brand meaning - where do the brand associations come from? This paper demonstrates how five distinct meaning domains forming a sub-brand are derived, using an approach known as "associative group analysis" (Marsden, 2002; Szalay, Carroll, & Tims, 1993) that employs the free association method in a systematic fashion. A sample of 58 individuals recorded associations for 17 Australian and international sub-brands across nine product categories. The resultant 3514 brand associations yielded the following brand meaning domains: parent company (PARENT) associations, product category (CATEGORY) characteristics, semantics of brand elements (SEMANTICS), sub-brand unique identity (SUB-BRAND), and reference to competitors (COMPETITORS). To assess their clients' sub-brands, market researchers and branding practitioners can apply the techniques detailed in this study for generating free association data from a sample of respondents and categorising the associations into the five meaning domains. Implications for practitioners are offered.