Co-branding partner selection: The importance of belief revision

Abstract

This paper applies the stereotype change theory to help bridge a major literature gap on co-branding partner selection: why both identical and highly different brand pairs often fail. We argue that, given that a primary goal of establishing a co-branding alliance is to positively revise consumers’ beliefs about important attributes of the allying brands, the case of no belief-revision can lead to a failure of the alliance. We show that both an identical and a highly incongruent partnership in terms of attribute-level difference can fail due to the lack of belief-revision. We report that a moderately incongruent brand pair is a promising decision on co-branding partner selection. In doing so, our research contributes to the explanation of why the two “extreme” types of co-branding alliances may fail from the perspective of consumer evaluation. For brand managers, we offer a normative guideline for co-branding partner selection.

Keywords:

• belief-revision
• co-branding
• partner selection
• stereotype change
• book-keeping
• sub-typing

JEL Classification:

• M31

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chia-Lin Lee

Chia-Lin LEE (Dr) is an assistant professor of marketing in the Department of Business Administration at National Chengchi University, Taiwan. His research interests include co-branding strategy and mathematical modeling. He has successfully received financial support for four research projects from the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology during 2010–2016. His research has been published, among others, in European Research Studies Journal.

Reinhold Decker

Reinhold DECKER (Dr) is a full professor of marketing in the Department of Business Administration and Economics at Bielefeld University, Germany. His current research focuses on the modeling of consumer behavior, brand management, the analysis of online consumer reviews and on the internet of things. His research has been published in journals such as Australasian Marketing Journal, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, International Journal of Market Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, and Journal of Product Innovation Management.