The influence of cultural values and gender role attitudes on the perception and evaluation of cross-gender brand extensions: An examination of Indian consumers

In an increasingly globalized and connected world and therefore, in an increasing competitive market, establishing brands is becoming more challenging for companies. It is well-known that creating a new brand needs a lot of investment. Hence, one convenient and promising approach for many companies is the implementation of brand extension strategies to enter new markets. Brand extensions refer to the usage of a current brand name to enter a new market segment. One major advantage to use an established brand is that consumers are already familiar with the brand and thus, less marketing effort and expenses are necessary. Furthermore, an established brand increases the competitive advantage for a company when entering a new market. One specific approach during the last years has been the so called cross-gender brand extensions. Cross-gender brand extensions mean to use an established brand name and extend it to target the opposite sex. This master’s thesis aims to gain a better comprehension of the sociocultural context regarding cross-gender brand extensions in a fast growing and newly industrialized economy like India. Thereby, the master’s thesis takes up various research areas to adopt a holistic understanding of the research problem. The results are based on the analysis of ten semi-structured interviews with Indian consumers. The findings of the study suggest that cross-gender brand extensions are marketable in Indian despite the traditional values and gender role attitudes this country holds. However, those results refer mostly to urban areas. Moreover, regardless of the high gender inequality prevailing in India, gender role attitudes hardly seem to have any relevance among the interviewees on the evaluation of cross-gender brand extensions.