Having spent a lot of time acquiring articles relevant to co-brandedness from the seems to me to be excellent Journal of Marketing Research, yet spending comparably little time actually tackling (i.e. reading) these articles, I was pleased today to discover that I had come across what appears to me to at least partially or perhaps entirely be the first "definitive" study of brand alliances published in the marketing literature: Simonin, Bernard L. and Ruth, Julie A.'s paper titled, Is a Company Known by the Company It Keeps? Assessing the Spillover Effects of Brand Alliances on Consumer Brand Attitudes, published 1998 in the aforementioned Journal of Marketing Research.

Here are the rules of the brand alliance, as uncovered by Simonin and Ruth in their pre-tested, placebo approved experiment on the effects of co-branding on consumer perceptions of individual partner brands as well as the brand alliance itself:

This is maybe the most important conclusion of Simonin and Ruth, as apparently there were previously doubts as to whether co-branding partnerships do, in fact, do anything for the brands involved.

Again, mostly just confirming that brand alliances have an effect. According to the researchers, there has been "explosive growth" in co-marketing and joint branding efforts in the 1990s, with cooperative brand activities enjoying a 40% annual growth rate in recent years. That's a lot of co-branding.

This is interesting. Less familiar brands have the potential to gain more in the way of positive "spillover effects," while contributing less influence on attitudes toward the brand alliance. The more familiar brand exerts greater influence on the brand alliance, while at the same time gaining less as an individual brand, due to the fact that brand associations are by and large resistant to change once they have been firmly established.

Terrific.

I really like both of the concepts: "product fit" and "brand (image) fit." The researchers define product fit as consumers' perceptions of the compatibility of two product categories, irrespective of the brands involved. Because in a brand alliance the two brands are typically contributing their "specialty," there is no need to consider the adverse effects of brand extension that, say, Betty Crocker might experience when extending its brand into the bicycle market. This would be a bad "product fit," because Betty Crocker makes cake, a product category not so compatible with bicycles.

A "brand image" is defined as "perceptions of the brand that reflect consumer associations of the brand in memory." Thus, if the two brand images are "somehow inconsistent, consumers might activate a causal or attributional search, through which they are likely to question why these two brands are associated." The example the researchers give of a bad brand fit is an alliance between McDonald's and a "low-share, low-quality brand of cola." This seems really funny to me, that consumers might go on a "causal or attributional search" if they are presented with two brands of seemingly incompatible classes.

WHY IS MCDONALD'S IN BED WITH THAT OTHER COLA?!?!?

This is a question the brands don't want consumers to be asking.

Meaning, I think, that these two concepts (product fit and brand fit), which are themselves defined through the alliance, affect the core brands solely through the mediation of the alliance. Unless I am mistaken, this is kind of a redundant statement.

Wow. Am I just boring myself, or are all of these points starting to seem redundant? I think the thing that is difficult for me to grasp is the particular use of the language, which is a scientific usage, though the language itself employs terms with variant meanings. So, here "spillover effects" and "alliance" are represented as mathematically derivable sums, determined by the equation of the variables "familiarity," "influence/affect," "product fit," "brand fit" etc.

Whereas, I might think that a positive effect on attitudes toward the brand alliance is one of many "spillover effects." I might think that "product fit" and "brand fit" are inseparable, though I understand the necessity of distinguishing them.

In any case, here is the final conclusion:

I hate this final point. Though product fit and brand fit "significantly affect attitudes toward the alliance," they do not "moderate" contributions of brands to the alliance or spillover effects of the alliance on the core brands. What does "moderate" mean in this particular equation? How can the compatibility of two products or their brand images "significantly affect" attitudes about the brand alliance, while not "moderating" the effects of positive attitudes about the brand alliance on the core brands? It seems to me that if the compatibility of products or their brand images comes significantly to bear on the perception of the alliance, then by necessity "product fit" and "brand fit" moderate the contributions each brand is perceived to be making to the alliance, as well as the consequent effects of the alliance on each brand.

Is this a crazy thing to be writing? This is how marketing research papers are written. I am glad I read the paper, but I am as confused as I am glad. Where confusion and gladness are perceived to be equal terms, my gladness is moderated by the alliance of confusion and the paper. Gladness does not significantly affect my perception of the paper or its concepts. I am not glad I did not read the paper.

Any thoughts?