The Research On The Influence Of Partner's Brand Equity And Cobranding Fit On Cobranding Effects

Since the 1980s, as one of marketing strategies which used by enterprises widely, cobranding has always been the hot spot of the business practices. Owing to the positive market effects that cobranding can bring, enterprises tend to consider a lot of factors when choosing a cobranding partner. Although existing researches have proved that partner's brand equity and cobranding fit are crucial to cobranding's success, but few scholars combined the two variables to discuss the mechanism of cobranding effects. In addition, Regulatory Focus Theory points out different regulatory focus consumers have different characteristics in information processing, which make them focus on different points of cobranding information. Therefore, how regulatory focus influences cobranding effects, and how regulatory focus moderates the impact of partner's brand equity and cobranding fit on cobranding effects? There is still a lack of such study in existing researches.Regarding the above background, and based on existing literatures, this study introduced Regulatory Focus Theory into the cobranding research to investigate how partner's brand equity, cobranding fit and regulatory focus influence the cobranding effects, which is divided into consumer's attitude toward cobranding and cobranded product evaluation two dimensions. We designed a three-factors-between-subjects experiment of 2(partner's brand equity:high vs. low)* 2(cobranding fit:high vs. low)* 2 (regulatory focus:promotion vs. prevention), then used the SPSS21.0, AMOS21.0 to analysis the experiment data.The empirical research showed that both partner's brand equity and cobranding fit has a significant positive influence on cobranding effects, namely positively influence consumer's attitude toward the cobranding and cobranded product evaluation. Regulatory focus influences cobranding effects, specifically, compared to promotion-focus consumers, prevention-focus consumers' attitude toward the cobranding and cobranded product evaluation are higher. Regulatory focus can't moderate the impact of partner's brand equity on cobranding effects. However, regulatory focus moderates the impact of cobranding fit on consumer's attitude toward the cobranding. Particularly, the effect of cobranding fit on consumer's attitude toward the cobranding is stronger among promotion-focus consumers rather than prevention-focus consumers. Lastly, regulatory focus can't moderate the impact of cobranding fit on consumer's cobranded product evaluation. Finally, according to the research results, we put forward some management suggestions and future research direction.