Research On The Transnational Corporate Brand Alliance Based On Consumer’s Perspective

Since many scholars brought forward this conception in 1980 s, brand alliance has been widely applied, and becomes a key strategic method by which corporations gain competitive advantages. In recent years, with the continually accelerating process of economic globalization, the scope of brand alliance has extended into businesses in different countries.There appears a series of famous global co-brandings in the world such as “Sony Ericsson”and “Fujitsu Siemens”. Some such companies rapidly improve their brand assets through brand collaboration in the development process of globalization, seizing opportunities in the market. In China, brand alliance, especially international brands alliance, increases quickly,including "FAW-Volkswagen", "BMW-Brilliance", "ICBC-CS" and "Total-Sinochem",involving many industries such as automobile, finance, medicine, logistics, petroleum and education sector. It has become an important way that China introduces foreign investment and international companies enter its emerging markets. It is benefit for Chinese corporations to more fast set up influential brands and accelerates their own global development steps.However, looking back into the existing research results, the research on brand alliance by scholars at home and abroad hasn’t divided levels of brand, referred to few images of country brand and was frail about transnational corporate brand alliance. Focused on the transnational corporate brand alliance and other factors, this research try to employ using analysis methods such as structural equation modeling, choosing Chinese automobile consumers as objects of research and ordering to gave suggestions to Chinese companies when choosing the brand strategy and founding the international co-branding.Based on the related theories including that of brand alliance, corporation brand, country brand, this paper analyzes and studies the core question of "transnational corporate brand alliance". Besides, it also studies the main effects and influences of transnational corporate brand alliance from the evaluations of consumers, and also influences for consumers. At first,this paper analyzes the research results of existing scholars, and ensures the research content,lines of thinking and research frames. Secondly, based on combing and reviewing a large sum of relevant documents, it conducts some theoretical analysis combined with this research theme, building "transnational corporate brand alliance effect modeling" and also bringsforward related assumptions. Then, it does some researches and designs as well as questionnaire survey. Based on its effective data, this paper uses analysis methods including variance analysis, co-variance analysis and structural equation, to test the modeling and research assumptions, deeply analyzing the collaboration effect and affecting factors and also its influence for consumers. At last, based on empirical analysis, this paper discusses the research results and gives policy recommendations. The following conclusions have been made in this passage.Firstly, the review of consumers for partner brand affects the review for the co-branding.This conclusion shows that if the brand alliance research modeling of Simonin & Ruth(1998)extends into multi-national enterprise, and many previous important conclusions are still valid.Consumers’ review of partner brand is still the key influential factors of that of co-branding.In detail, review for partner brand is more positive, that for co-branding will accordingly be more positive. This conclusion suggests that, when it comes to the co-branding, the transnational company should choose a partner that has a good reputation among consumers in order to gain better benefits.Second, customers’ perception of matching degree towards partner brand affects their evaluation towards the co-branding. This result shows that the conclusion achieved from former researches on the matching of co-branding is still applicable if it being further expanded to the co-branding on the company level. Customers’ perception of matching degree towards partner brand is a major, even dominating factor that influences their evaluation towards the new co-branding. Specifically, the higher matching degree the partner brands they are, the more positive evaluation that consumers will hold towards the co-branding. This means that when choose partners in co-branding, a transnational company should not only focus on consumers’ evaluation towards partner brands, but also pay attention to companies that have a higher matching degree with its own brands, with a purpose to greater improve the performance of the co-branding.Third, customers’ perception of the matching degree of partner brand country has a direct influence on their perceptions toward the matching of co-branding companies, as well as an indirect influence on their evaluations toward the co-branding. According to Bluemelhuber et al.(2007), customers’ perceptions toward the matching degree of original country will affect their perceptions toward the matching degree of the brands, as well as their evaluationstoward the co-branding. This conclusion is still backed up by this research. However, in this paper, customers’ perceptions toward the matching degree of original country do not directly affect their perceptions toward the matching degree of the co-branding, but rather in an indirect way by utilizing the mediation effect of the matching degree of brands to affect the customers’ evaluations toward the co-branding. The result shows that the higher matching degree that the customers have towards the image of the original country of a brand the more positive evaluations they will have toward the co-branding. This means that when choose a partner in co-branding, the transnational company should also attach importance to the matching degree of customers toward the image of the brand’s original country. A low matching degree will negatively affect the performance of the co-branding.Fourth, customers’ evaluations toward the co-branding affect their evaluations toward the product brand. According to Brand Hierarchy, customers’ evaluations toward the company brand, which lies in the top, will affect their evaluations toward the product brand.In this research, it shows that in the circumstances that when the company brand is a transnational one, customers’ evaluations will still remarkably affect their evaluations toward the product brand. Moreover, there is also a result shows that the customer evaluations of the companies that participate in the co-branding effort will not directly affect their evaluations toward the product brand, but rather have an indirect influence through the customers’ evaluations toward co-branding. This conclusion shows that when a new co-branding is established by companies from two different countries, customer evaluation towards the two companies will hold a positive influence on the customer evaluation of the new product brand.Fifth, the image of the partner brand’s original country affects customers’ evaluation toward the co-branding. This conclusion verify that the "original country effect" also exists in the company brand level, which means that a higher reputation the brand’s original country has, the more positive evaluations that customers will have toward the company brand.Sixth, the image of the partner brand’s original country affects customers’ perceptions toward the matching degree of the partner brand’s original country. This conclusion shows that the evaluations of customers have to different images of countries will affect their perceptions of matching degree between two or more countries.This paper further improved the brand alliance theory. First, this paper initially built up the theoretical framework of studying the effect of transnational corporate brand alliance. Thispaper presents several innovations, including the distinction of differences in the brand hierarchy, the emphasis on the joint effort in the company brand level. What’s more, factors,such as the image of the partner brand’s original country and the matching degree of the company brand’s original country have be added into consideration, and a model of theoretical framework of studying the transnational corporate brand alliance effect of a company as well as its theoretical framework have been established. Second, this paper discusses the influences of country image and the matching degree of countries on the alliance brand effect and its function model. By studying the influences of the alliance brand, company brand, country brand and other factors on image of the original country, as well as the influences of matching degree on the effect of a transnational corporate brand alliance, a conclusion has been achieved, which shows that the image of company brand’s original country as well as its matching degree, has a significant influence on the effect of the transnational corporate brand alliance. Third, this paper also discusses about the influences of the co-branding act on the customers’ evaluations toward the brands, which lays a theoretical foundation for the co-branding company’s efforts in producing new products to targeted market.This research is of application value and reference signification for companies to implement the strategy of co-branding. With the globalization of economy and the deepening reform and open-up of China, the pace of foreign capital entering into China will be faster and faster. While during this progress, the successful implement of co-branding strategy and an innovative product strategy will favorable for Chinese companies to improve its brand assert and market impact rapidly. For a company, when choosing a partner in co-branding effort, it should not only take the customers’ ’ evaluations toward the brand of the partnering company and the matching degree between it and itself into consideration, but also attach importance to image of the partner brand’s original country and the matching degree between the two countries. Because that when the partner enjoys a high reputation among customers and has a high matching degree, it will be of great benefit in improving the customers’ evaluation after the co-branding act. For a country, the government should fully recognize that the country brand has an important influence on companies and company brand. Therefore, the government should make the building of a "country brand" as a national strategy and takefurther steps to improve its image worldwide, for a purpose to advance the local company brand and product brand.