Research On The Effect Of Perceived Brand Fit On Co-branding Advertising

More and more brands from different industries are applying cooperative advertising in order to integrate their publicity advantages and achieve win-win situations.For example,cooperative advertising is not only beneficial to share and reduce promotion costs,but also helpful to rapidly open up new markets or expand user market by penetrating into each others’ target market.Besides,the unexpected and creative co-branding advertising help to enrich the brand image and attract consumers’ attention.However,not all co-branding advertising can achieve great success.If consumers perceive that two cooperative brands do not fit or match,these inappropriate co-branding advertising is far from satisfactory,causing a negative spillover effect on cooperative brands.Why are some co-advertising successful while others are unsatisfactory? However,there are few and rare researches on co-branding advertising,especially among brands across different fields and industries,while most of the researches on co-branding are focused on R&D,production,design and other fields.As a result,it is difficult to provide clear guidance for the selection of cooperative partners to launch co-advertising.Based on the questionnaire survey of 472 participants,this study found that the fit in brand level such as brand association,brand positioning,brand concept,users group and so on,plays a great significant role in co-branding advertising.The higher the degree of brand fit perceived by consumers,the more positive co-advertising attitude can be formed and a higher level of brand recall can be obtained.Secondly,perceived advertising playfulness and perceived advertising innovativeness play an intermediary role between perceived brand fit and co-advertising attitude,brand recall respectively.Additionally,consumers’ holistic or analytical thinking and cognitive style has a moderating effect on the relationship between perceived brand fit and perceived advertising playfulness,perceived advertising innovativeness respectively.Specifically,compared with the analytical consumers,the brand fit perceived by the holistic consumers has a stronger impact on the perceived advertising playfulness and innovativeness.Based on the Classification Theory,Emotion Transfer Theory and Flow Theory,this study hopes to enrich brand communication theory which is sound and mature for only one brand,as well to provide practical suggestions for brands to select partners and implement cross-border co-branding advertising.On the one hand,it is significant to evaluate the fit and matching at the brand level to find a suitable partner.On the other hand,it is necessary to highlight their fit while making theco-advertising interesting,enjoyable,innovative and creative.