Genre Similarity and Technical Direction: Examining Audience Responses to Human Brand Extension

The purpose of this study is to examine the consumer attitude toward the star genre extension. Stars from other popular genres have been cast in cultural products in order to reduce the market risks, even though they are not... [ view full abstract ]

The purpose of this study is to examine the consumer attitude toward the star genre extension. Stars from other popular genres have been cast in cultural products in order to reduce the market risks, even though they are not quite qualified. We define that the star genre extension is that a star extends his field to other genre (For example, Actor → Singer or Singer → Actor, etc.). From the human brand's point of view, we test the consumer response for the star genre extension. The brand extension was more successful when a brand extended into more similar and into more technically downward categories. Similar to the brand extension, we assume that the consumer attitude is more positive when a star extends into more similar genre and such extended genre is more technically downward than the original genre of the star. Six imaginary articles about star genre extension were made as experimental stimuli. A total of 305 data were collected. The result of this study showed that the participants favored the star and the extended product when the star extended into more similar genre and the extended genre was more technically downward than the original genre of the star.