The power of one or the strength of two: the role of co-brands as enablers of feedback effects in category extensions
Rico Piehler, Michael Schade, Fabian Kraus, Marius Diegel, Christoph BurmannPurpose
This paper aims to compare non-co-branded and co-branded extension strategies in relation to the feedback effect of category extensions on the existing brand, with a particular focus on different levels of customer identification with the existing brand.
Design/methodology/approach
This research applies the enabler logic from schema theory and uses two experimental studies to compare the effect of non-co-branded and co-branded extension strategies on customers’ attitude towards the existing brand.
Findings
The results of this study indicate that a co-branded extension strategy, through a serial mediation, leads to a more favourable attitude towards the existing brand than a non-co-branded strategy. Using a co-brand results in a positive attitude change for customers with low levels of identification and mitigates the negative feedback effect for highly identified customers.
Research limitations/implications
The limitations of this research relate to the use of a single level of incongruity, identification as the segmentation criterion and sports team brands as the context. Future research should investigate other degrees of incongruity, segmentation criteria and empirical contexts.
Practical implications
This article recommends a co-branded extension strategy for category extensions. It protects against the negative feedback effect on customers with high levels of identification and has the potential to attract customers with low levels of identification.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to brand extension literature by comparing extension strategies regarding the feedback effect of category extensions on existing brands, separately for customers with low and high levels of identification. This study provides a novel theoretical underpinning for these effects through the enabler logic and explores the underlying psychological mechanism.