Author(s)

Tian Gan

Corresponding Author

Tian Gan

ABSTRACT

In today’s market, brands partner up with each other with new collaborations and products that carry the parent brands’ unique personalities identities. Many of these cross-brand collaborations turn out to be huge successes. However, how would the collaborating brands’ distinct personalities affect the collaboration? In particular, what if the collaborating brands have similar brand personalities to each other (congruent brands) vs. different brand personalities (incongruent brands)? In this research, we examined consumers' views on various brand collaborations. Specifically, we explored the effect of congruent vs. incongruent brand collaborations on consumer’s preferences, purchase intentions and recommendation intentions. In three studies, we found that congruent brand collaborations significantly increased consumers’ likings towards the parent brands. In addition, we found a significant positive impact of incongruent brand collaborations on consumers’ purchase intentions and word of mouth (WOM) towards the new collaborated products. Our findings shed light on the new trend of brand collaborations, especially how brands’ personalities could play a role in the collaboration. We offered not only theoretical contributions to the research of brand collaborations, but also implicational insights for marketers on brand collaboration decisions.

KEYWORDS

Brand collaboration, brand personality, purchase intention, WOM