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THE EFFECT OF SENSORY FIT ON CONSUMER EVALUATIONS ON COBRANDING
Co-branding is defined as a marketing strategy in which “two brands are deliberately paired with one another in a marketing context such as in ads, products, products placements, and distribution outlets” (Grossman 1997, p. 191). Prior research suggests that the crucial key to the success of co-branding is perceived fit including both product category fit and brand image fit. The product category fit is the relevancy of product category between partner brands about co-branding product or brand. For example, “Apple” collaborated with “Nike” to make a smart watch for sports activates. The brand image fit is about how the images (such as luxury image, young and fun image) fit between the partner brands. Prior co-branding research shed light on the effects of perceived fit between co-branding partner brands. Nevertheless, the findings of prior research have been limited to the two types of perceived fit. This research introduced the new-type of perceived fit called “sensory fit” In the current study, the sensory fit is defined as the perceptual congruency between partner brands’ sensory factors such as color, shape, size, and so on. Still, the sensory fit in context of co-branding are yet to be fully investigated by academic research. To fill the gap in the literature, we designed two experimental studies to better understand how the sensory fit affects the evaluations of co-branding. In study 1, we manipulated the partner brands’ sensory attributes (i.e., pronunciation of brand name and shape of brand logo). The results showed that the sensory fit significantly influences consumers’ response to co-branding. That is, a significant interaction (sensory fit × product involvement) was observed, suggesting that participants showed more positive attitudes on the evaluation of co-branding in the low-involvement product (i.e., mug) condition. However, the same pattern was not observed in the high involvement product condition (i.e., laptop). In Study 2, we replicated the findings of Study 1 and used letter style of brand name to manipulated the sensory fit. Findings showed a significant main effect of sensory fit again. Interestingly, the sensory fit was found in the high-involvement and hedonic products condition only. In sum, our findings suggest that the sensory fit should be considered as it predicts the success of co-branding strategy.
