Impact of the number and congruence of co-branding partners on evaluations of the strength and uniqueness of a focal brand’s core associations

This research adopts a portfolio perspective to co-branding practices, and explores how the number and congruence of co-branding partners influence the evaluations of a focal brand’s core associations in an alliance. While most co-branding research to date has investigated single-partnerships insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(i.e., a focal brand collaborating with another brand);, limited work has focused on multiple partnership strategies insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(i.e., a focal brand collaborating with multiple other brands);. Based on Keller’s insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(1993); brand equity framework, we specifically explore how the strength and uniqueness of a focal brand’s core associations are influenced by the changing number and congruence level of its co-branding partners. Our results show that when the number of congruent co-branding partners increases, the strength and uniqueness of the focal brand’s core associations enhance. Each additional congruent partner helps strengthen the focal brand meaning. However, when the number of incongruent co-branding partners increases, the strength and uniqueness of the focal brand’s core association do not decrease further compared to when it partners with a single brand. These findings suggest that increasing the number of co-branding partners influence the strength and uniqueness of a focal brand’s core associations only when the constituent brands are congruent.