Priming a Cross-Category Brand Alliance: The Moderating Role of Attribute Knowledge and Need for Cognition

Firms often enter cross-category advertising brand alliance strategies with the goal to increase their market share by association with popular but noncompeting brand allies. However, firms are often not aware of the effects of these alliances on consumer perceptions of participating brands. This research explores the factors moderating brand attribute inferences following exposure to a cross-category advertising brand alliance. It is proposed that attributes of a brand ally may serve as anchors that produce assimilation effects and move perceptions of a target brand toward the ally’s attribute value, or as standards of comparison that produce contrast. This work provides evidence that attribute judgments in a cross-category advertising brand alliance are moderated by attribute knowledge and individual differences in information processing motivation as reflected in self-reported need for cognition (NFC) ratings. C © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. The past decade witnessed a strong increase in different forms of inter-firm cooperation such as joint ventures, ingredient branding, brand alliances, and crosspromotions. This research focuses on an increasingly popular form of advertising brand alliance that links brands from different product categories that share a common goal. Some marketplace examples of crosscategory advertising brand alliances include Starbucks allied with Hewlett Packard, Nike and iPod, Kellogg’s and Tropicana, and AOL paired with American Airlines. Although the brand association in these crosscategory alliances may be surprising to consumers due to little similarity between the associated product categories, this work shows that these alliances can serve as efficient tools for brand repositioning as they may boost consumer perceptions of brand attributes. Nonetheless, marketplace examples suggest that these strategies should be used with caution since such alliances may also hurt participating brands. For example, when H&R Block participated in a joint advertising campaign with Excedrin, the association with migraine headaches resulted in negative press for H&R Block (The Wall Street Journal, 1991). Previous work on brand alliance strategies looked at the effect of a brand alliance on overall attitudes toward participating brands (Lafferty, 2009; Levin & Levin, 2000; Rao & Ruekert, 1994; Rao et al., Simonin & Ruth, 1998; Walchli, 2007). Simonin and Ruth (1998) found that consumer attitudes toward a brand alliance influence subsequent attitudes of each brand partner and that familiarity with the brand moderates the strength of the effects observed on individual brands. Levin and Levin (2000) show that a brand ally may serve as context for the judgment of a target brand and have an assimilation effect on overall attitudes toward a target. Hence, after exposure to information about a brand ally consumers’ overall evaluation of the target brand shifted toward the evaluation of the ally. In a cobranding context Walchli (2007) found that individuals’ level of elaboration on the rationale of the brand partnership moderated the relationship between perceived congruity of the brand partners and overall product Psychology and Marketing, Vol. 30(2): 133–147 (February 2013) View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/mar C © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/mar.20593