When two or more branded products are integrated, like IBM and Intel or Bacardi Rum and Coca-Cola, they are perceived as linked, or jointly branded. The authors present a rationale for why such alliances may sometimes be an appropriate strategy. They develop a managerial decision template to analyze the costs and benefits of joint branding, and discuss the implications of such decisions for different types of allies. They conclude by calling for multidisciplinary empirical examinations of brand alliances.
Brand Alliances as Signals of Product Quality
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Mark Bergen of the University of Chicago, Orville C. Walker, Jr., of the University of Minnesota, and two anonymous reviewers for their extensive and constructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper.