Whose cobrand is it anyway? Exploring consumer interpretations of a brand alliance.

摘要

A brand alliance may best be described as the short or long term association or combination of tangible and intangible attributes associated with brand partners (Rao and Ruekert 1994) and one of the most popular types of brand alliances is a cobrand partnership. In the research proposed here cobranding is believed to differ from other forms of brand alliance strategies in at least two important ways. First, a cobranding strategy suggests some form of collaboration between the brands resulting in a new or enhanced product (Jones and Boush 2002, 2003b) and second, the collaboration is explicitly communicated.; This characterization raises several questions considered in this research. While the proposed definition reflects the intent of marketing practitioners, do consumers also recognize the strategy as an alliance intended to communicate a new or enhanced product? If consumers recognize this intent, is each brand viewed as a partial owner of the product and are the brands equally responsible for product performance? Further, what factors may influence perceived ownership and what influence may a second brand name have on price expectations? The dissertation presents hypotheses related to these questions grounded in signaling theory, the persuasion knowledge model and the creative cognition literature.; An experimental design was used to test the hypotheses. The results suggest that consumers recognize a cobrand partnership as a marketing strategy intended to communicate a new or enhanced product and that both brands are partially responsible for the product. Further, while terminology adapted from the concept specialization model may help to describe the role each brand plays in the partnership, the heuristics consumers use to assign these roles may be more complicated than previously thought. The results suggest that consumer confidence in the assignment of ownership may vary based on perceived brand congruence with the product category and the type of cobrand partnership (ingredient and composite). The results also suggest that the addition of a second brand may reduce consumer perceptions of risk allowing the brands to charge a price premium. The dissertation concludes with the implications of the findings for scholars and practitioners, research limitations and future research directions.