Co-Branding: Fit Factors between Partner Brands

Firms are continuously looking for new opportunities to exploit and leverage their existing brands to achieve business growth. In the past, companies have leveraged their 'most important asset' (brands) through brand and line extensions. Nowadays, the most recent trend for capitalizing on brands is called 'Co-Branding' in which two or more brands are presented jointly to the consumer, forming a new product or service offering. This new branding strategy promises many benefits, especially for companies operating internationally with strong global brands.
This study is about the perception of 'fit' between two partner brands in a co-branding venture. Previous studies have already identified that a perceived fit between partner brands leads to a positive evaluation of the co-branded offering by consumers. But why are some brands perceived as fitting together by consumers and others are not?
To answer this question, this study investigates which factors (e.g. similar price level, target group, product category) lead to a perceived fit between partner brands by consumers.

Peter Zickermann, geboren 1985 in Hamburg, hat Business Administration & Economics an der Universität Passau studiert und danach sein Wissen im Bereich Marketing während seines Masterstudiums an der Copenhagen Business School in Dänemark vertieft. Während seiner akademischen Laufbahn studierte er außerdem zeitweise in Kalifornien, Prag und Guangzhou (China). Peter Zickermann konzentrierte seine Forschung auf Unternehmens- und Markenstrategien, insbesondere auf die Blue Ocean Strategy und auf Co-Branding. Nach praktischen Erfahrungen bei Siemens, Beiersdorf und Philips arbeitet er heute als Produktmanager für ein großes international tätiges Unternehmen in der Konsumgüterindustrie.