Introduction Brand equity has been receiving utmost attention in academia and practice over the past decades and continues to be of significant interest. Brands have been identified as one of the most valuable assets and firms try to leverage brands in increasingly complex brand portfolios. A large body of literature exists on spillover effects with regard to brand extensions. However, little is known about how corporate branding within product brand communication impacts brand equity. Therefore, this study examines to what extent product brand attitudes spill over to corporate brands. Furthermore, it investigates how corporate branding affects corporate brand attitude. Finally, the role of product brand familiarity, corporate brand familiarity and involvement in brand leverage and dilution is assessed. Method and data Answers to these questions are provided with a sample of 407 subjects that participated in an online experiment and were presented with a print ad either for brands in the FMCG or pharmaceutical category. The experiment included a 2 (corporate brand familiarity: high or low) x 2 (product brand familiarity: high or low) x 2 (category involvement: high or low) x 2 (corporate brand presence: yes or no) factorial design. Measures included brand attitude, attitude towards the ad, brand familiarity and category involvement. Analysis of covariance is employed to test for main effects and interaction effects, pairwise comparisons to test for group differences and multigroup analysis by means of structural equation modelling and path analysis to test for differences in effect sizes for the spillover between product brands and corporate brands. Summary of findings The study provides evidence that corporate brand presence in product brand communication affects corporate brand attitude and that a significant effect is observed for the affective component of corporate brand attitude. No significant effect is found for the cognitive component. Other than expected, the findings demonstrate that corporate brand presence of familiar corporate brands in the high-involvement category (FMCGs) leads to affective corporate brand dilution. Consistently and irrespective of category, the results indicate that corporate brand presence leads to affective corporate brand dilution when corporate brand familiarity and product brand familiarity are low or when product brand familiarity and corporate brand familiarity are high. A tendency for affective brand leverage is indicated for unfamiliar corporate brands when product brands are familiar, which however requires further investigation. Moreover, the findings indicate that the degree of spillover effects differs for the two categories as hypothesized. Stronger positive effects occur in the high-involvement category of FMCGs. Key contributions The findings reveal that corporate brand presence affects corporate brand attitude while differentiating between an affective and cognitive component. Such a differentiation is indispensable as affective effects prevail. Furthermore, this study sheds light on category-specific effects. While corporate brands in the FMCG category evoke stronger positive spillover, the negativity effect of corporate brand presence supersedes and results in brand dilution irrespective of product brand familiarity. Independent of category, when product brands and corporate brands are either low in familiarity or high in familiarity, corporate brands suffer from brand dilution. However, brand dilution is not observed when unfamiliar corporate brands appear with familiar product brands indicating potential for brand leverage. The findings of this study provide new insights into the interplay between product brands and corporate brands and offer valuable guidance for brand communication in both categories. Although corporate branding within product brand communication is increasingly being practiced, these results should encourage brand managers to carefully consider whether corporate brand presence enhances brand equity or presents a liability.

This research examines the interplay between brand structure (i.e., cohesiveness and similarity) and extension typicality on extension spillover effects using two experimental studies. The results reveal that the dominance of brand similarity and cohesiveness on extension spillover effects depends on how typical the effecting brand extension is to its brand. For typical extensions, the cohesiveness of existing brand extensions is the determinant factor on extension spillover effects. In contrast, for atypical extensions, the similarity of existing brand extensions is the determinant factor on extension spillover effects. Moreover, brands with similar brand extensions are inherently perceived as high cohesive brands, which enhance perceived brand quality. In contrast, brands with dissimilar brand extensions are inherently perceived as low cohesive brands, which weaken perceived brand quality. However, brands with dissimilar brand extensions are perceived to be cohesive brands if the product functions of the brand extensions are interdependent.

Based on the inner-effect mechanism of transport infrastructure and regional economic growth, this paper builds a specialized spatial weight matrix by utilizing the panel data from 31 provinces in New Silk Road Economic Belt (NSREB) and other areas from 2005 to 2014, and combines with the spatial panel model to analyze the spatial spillover effects of transport infrastructure. According to the analysis, the transport infrastructure plays an obvious lead role in regional economy growth alongside the NSREB, and the economic growth invigorates common development in surrounding regions. In addition, differences were observed among the different transport infrastructure with regard to their influences on regional economic development, as the highway transport affects regional economic growth to a larger degree than railway transport.

The study examines the magnitude of economic spillover and the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows on the efficiency of the bank industry in China. This study employs unit root tests, cointegration tests and cointegrating regression analysis, including fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS), canonical cointegrating regression (CCR) and dynamic OLS (DOLS) to test the proposed hypotheses. The sample is restricted to the period of time in which monthly data is available and comparable among variables for the period from January 2002 to October 2013 (142 observations). All of the time series data was collected and retrieved from the People’s Bank of China, China Monthly Statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, and International Financial Statistics database from International Monetary Fund. The results of the Johansen cointegration test suggest that there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between FDI inflows, foreign exchange rate and banks performance in China. The results of cointegrating regression analysis using FMOLS, CCR and DOLS suggest that M2 supply and FDI inflows are significant at the 0.01 level. The results confirm that FDI inflows in the banking sector are positively related to the increase of banks productivity and performance and short-term loans in China. However, the results suggest that Chinese Yuan currency exchange rate to U.S. dollar is not significant in the banking and financial industry of China.