A strong brand is a rather invaluable asset. The recognition of this fact has awakened the interest of professionals and researchers, who focus on a variety of aspects involved in building brand value. Amongst this, the relationship between brands and extensions appears as a relevant item. The objective of this paper is to investigate the process of construction of a brand and its interaction with extensions in this process. To achieve this goal, field work has been carried out, including a descriptive study contemplating four leading brands of packaged staple goods marketed in Brazil: Arisco, Nestlé, Parmalat and Sadia. A predominantly structured questionnaire was applied to a sample of 400 buyers of this type of products in supermarkets. The survey results point at the following conclusions: the consumer tends to transfer his/her affection for the main brand to its extension, but when he or she does not like the extension it does not mean that he or she will necessarily dislike the main brand; the extension may, in some cases, be the access channel to the main brand; the comparison between products is stronger within the same category than among brands; and meaningless or secondary attributes may be useful when the consumer has doubts during the decision making process.
