Brand Alliance: Consumer Characteristics and the Interactive Effects
This article explores how product involvement and brand knowledge, which can be expressed by consumer characteristics, moderate the influence of brand equity and joint fit on brand alliance evaluation. Results indicate that the four variables have interactions in the brand alliance evaluation and suggest that brand equity and joint fit should be considered when enterprises choose their partners and the target promotion strategy should be taken according to consumer characteristics. Introduction Brand alliance, a cooperative marketing strategy involving combinations of two or more individual brands in a marketing context [1,2,3], having received attention in the early 1990s [4,5]. This strategy has obtained increased interest among both practitioners and theorists during the past two decades [6,7]. As the fierce competition, introducing a new brand becomes increasingly laden with financial risk and many companies today resort to brand alliance strategy, which usually provides a tool for implementing differentiation strategy [8,9]. As to the influential factors, prior research investigated the main effect of brand alliance, the influential factors and the “spill-over” effect, but mainly focused on the view of enterprises [10,11], only a few pay attentions to the consumers. Hillyer and Tikoo (1995) mentioned that consumers’ product involvement should be considered [12]. But there was no concerns with brand knowledge, which is an important construct of consumer characteristics, can be defined as the individualized understanding and information with respect to certain brands in consumers’ memory [13]. Consumers often apply their knowledge to comment on certain brands. Besides, the purpose of implementing brand alliance strategy is to improve consumers’ attitude toward new product by means of other brand equity [14,15]. Moreover, brand alliance is a complicated strategy, and consumers’ buying behavior is a complex process as well, controlled by various variables. Their evaluation toward brand alliance is influenced by the interactive factors as a whole. Therefore, researchers should put the interactions into account and accurately estimate the main effect. Based on these, this paper focuses on testifying the effect of the two main consumer characteristics, brand knowledge and product involvement, and the interactions between them. The study firstly proposes the hypotheses based on the literature; then an experimental design is presented; with the data collection, this study analyzes the influences of brand knowledge and product involvement and the interactions; finally the conclusion and implication are discussed. Conceptual Framework and Hypotheses Brand Knowledge Consumer knowledge is a significant factor in consumer behavior, and plays an important role in consumer information processing and buying decisions [16]. Researchers mentioned that consumers would differently behave towards the new things based on the product information quantities, content and infrastructure [17]. When consumers had high level of knowledge, they would identify relevant information and can understand and deal with the information more quickly, even point out the problems [17]. The higher brand knowledge level was, the higher the decision quality would be [18] . Therefore, the authors propose: H1-1. Brand knowledge moderates the positive relationship between brand equity and brand alliance evaluation. H1-2. Brand knowledge moderates the positive relationship between joint fit and brand alliance evaluation. Product Involvement Product involvement can be defined as the relevance, value and importance of the product class to the consumer’s own life, needs and interests[19,20].Since 1950s, the construct of involvement has emerged in the consumer behavior area and regarded as an important influential factor on the effectiveness of advertising. Zaichkowsky (1986) found the involvement influenced the consumer’s judgments and purchase decisions[19]. Nijssen (2005) found that consumers’ evaluation with high involvement was more affected by the perceived quality of the core brands and needed higher fit in brand extension[21].Therefore, this study hypothesizes: H2-1. Product involvement moderates the positive relationship between brand equity and brand alliance evaluation. H2-2. Product involvement moderates the positive relationship between joint fit and brand alliance evaluation. The Interactions between Brand Equity, Joint Fit, Product Involvement and Brand Knowledge In academic field, much attention has been paid to the influential factors of brand alliance. Researchers have verified the effect of brand equity and joint fit on brand alliance evaluation separately[3,9,22]. However, they ignored the interactions and consumers’ role, which affects enterprises to conduct business strategies. And the success of brand alliance needs to integrate the brand, product, equity, and consumers’ characteristic. Based on these, the authors propose that: H3. Under different levels of product involvement and brand knowledge, brand alliance evaluation may be affected by the interaction between brand equity and joint fit; H4. Under different levels of joint fit and brand knowledge, brand alliance evaluation may be affected by the interaction between brand equity and product involvement; H5. Under different levels of brand equity and brand knowledge, brand alliance evaluation may be affected by the interaction between product involvement and joint fit; H6. Under different levels of product involvement and joint fit, brand alliance evaluation may be affected by the interaction between brand equity and brand knowledge. H7. Under different levels of product involvement and brand equity, brand alliance evaluation may be affected by the interaction between joint fit and brand knowledge. Research Method An experiment design was conducted to test the changes of the dependent variables. For the core brands (A) and its partner brands (B), this study tested the hypotheses through between subject experimental designs in the 16 virtual brand alliances scenarios. Stimuli Selection The stimuli selection process can be divided 3 periods. Firstly, 24 volunteers were enrolled to choose the core brand and 8 partner products. Then, 15 volunteers scored their product involvement to decide partner product categories. Lastly, choose the partner brands. As a result, this study got four kinds of products and eight coined brands as stimulus, and altogether 16 brand alliance scenarios (i.e. 16 groups). Questionnaire Design and Measure Standard multi-item measures were adopted or modified from the published research using 7-point Likert scales. Before using these scales in formal experiments, a pre-test were conducted and the results supported the following study. Participants and Procedures The participants were mainly students, randomly formed 16 groups and 8 scenarios according to brand knowledge. The presenters described the partner brands according to the different scenarios, and the participants commented on the brand equity, brand knowledge and product involvement. Then, the introduction of the core brands and brand alliances was given, the participants evaluated the joint fit and brand alliance effectiveness. Finally, 336 effective questionnaires were collected, consisting of 136 males and 200 females. The descriptive statistics were shown in Table 1. Table 1. Descriptive statistics. Independent variable: brand alliance evaluation Product involvement Joint fit Brand equity of B Brand knowledge Sample size Min. Sum. Ave. Standard deviation High high(mobile phone) high(TMP1) high 21 6.22 7.00 6.5714 .21165 low 22 5.22 6.33 5.9848 .31295 low(TMP2) high 21 5.67 6.67 6.1799 .23954 low 20 5.44 6.44 6.0778 .22251 low(gym shoes) high(GS1) high 20 5.00 6.11 5.5556 .26977 low 21 4.22 5.00 4.6614 .23695 low(GS2) high 20 3.89 5.00 4.3667 .28408 low 21 4.00 4.67 4.3810 .20053 low High(flash disk) High(FD1) high 20 4.22 5.00 4.5444 .20039 low 20 3.22 4.44 3.9056 .29568 Low(FD2) high 23 2.22 4.00 3.2029 .44903 low 22 2.56 3.67 3.2727 .25134 Low(liquid shampoo) High(LS1) high 21 4.00 5.11 4.5291 .27421 low 22 3.22 4.56 3.8990 .30843 High(LS2) high 21 2.22 4.00 3.2698 .41062 low 21 2.56 3.56 3.1958 .33500 Data Analysis and Findings For the validity and reliability, SPSS 17.0 was employed. Each scale reached the standard (KMO>0.8, α=0.965>0.7). Correlation analysis showed that alliance evaluation significantly correlated with product involvement, joint fit, brand equity and brand knowledge (Table 2). Table 2. Correlation analysis. B brand equity Joint fit Product involvement Brand knowledge Alliance evaluation B brand equity 1 Joint fit .248*** 1 Product involvement .186*** .358*** 1 Brand knowledge .056 .090 .066 1 Alliance evaluation .385*** .479*** .859*** .138** 1 Each Construct’s Manipulation Test In order to testify these groups are significant. The authors used variance analysis to conduct one sample T test. Results showed that the mobile phone group and gym shoes group had higher scores in product involvement than the groups of flash dish and liquid shampoo (t=56.304, P<0.001); the group with high knowledge (M=5.98) was significantly higher than the group of low brand knowledge (M=3.26) (t=69.387,P<0.001); as to the joint fit, the two brands of mobile phone and flash disk individually got higher scores than the brands of gym shoes and liquid shampoo (t=45.855,P<0.001); and the four brands which had high brand equity got higher scores than the other four brands in the four categories (t=56.186, P<0.001). The Moderating Role of Brand Knowledge and Product Involvement This study tested the direct influence of independent variables, brand equity and joint fit and found that the model was supported (R 2 =0.305,F=73.015, p<0.001). Then the moderating role of brand knowledge and product involvement was tested. Firstly brand knowledge was checked. The first step was to add B brand equity, joint fit a