Original Article Marketing strategy decisions for brand extension success Received (in revised form): 30th July 2015 Pinelopi Athanasopoulou is Assistant Professor of Services Marketing at the University of Peloponnese in Greece. She holds a PhD in Marketing from Cass Business School, UK, an MBA from Manchester Business School, UK, and a BA in Business Administration from the Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece. Her research and teaching interests centre on new service development, relationship marketing and branding. She has published her work in various marketing journals including the European Journal of Marketing and Managing Service Quality. Apostolos N. Giovanis is Associate Professorof Tech Marketing in the department of Business Administration at the Technological Educational Institute (TEI) of Athens, Greece. He received his MSc and PhD in management, both from Technical University of Crete, Greece. He has long experience in several managerial roles in service management and marketing. His research interests focus on Service Management & Marketing, Innovation Management, and Customer Relationship Management and his academic work has been published in several international refereed journals. George J. Avlonitis is a Professor of Marketing in the Department of Marketing and Communication at the Athens University of Economics and Business. His primary research, teaching and consulting activities are in the areas of Product Policy, Sales Management, Industrial Marketing, Technological Innovation and Strategic Marketing. He has published widely in the most prestigious international marketing journals including Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and so on. Also, he is on the editorial board of 11 international journals. ABSTRACT This study looks at the marketing strategies used by fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) firms in developing brand extensions and determines which of these strategies may lead to extension success. First, a qualitative study was done involving in-depth interviews with brand or marketing managers in 12 FMCG firms regarding the development of 19 extensions both successful and unsuccessful. Qualitative data was combined with past research to design a conceptual framework that was used in the second stage of the study. In the second phase, a survey was carried out involving per- sonal interviews of brand/marketing managers or marketing directors in 15 FMCG firms regarding the development of 112 brand extensions. Data was collected through a structured questionnaire and analysed using the PLS method. Results show that there are five marketing strategy components that affect brand extension success sig- nificantly, quality of distribution strategy; quality of positioning; quality of product development strategy; extent of promotional investment and extent of market research. Within the quality of product development strategy the most important components are brand extension development quality and brand product portfolio similarity whereas in the quality of distribution strategy shelf quality is very important. Based on the marketing strategy components that were identified as important, a Correspondence: Pinelopi Athanasopoulou, Sport Management Department, University of Peloponnese, Efstathiou & Stamatikis Valioti & Plataion, 23100 Sparti, Greece E-mail: apinelopi@hotmail.com © 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1350-231X Journal of Brand Management Vol. 22, 6, 487–514 www.palgrave-journals.com/bm/