Abstract
A lot of businesses are enthusiastic at embracing the co-branding strategy in order to acquire more profit. However, would co-branding strategy always engender positive outcome? In particular, would consumers’ attitude be necessarily manipulated in a favorable way when encountering the persuasive communication consisting of positive co-branding? The present research is concentrated on the examination of how a context brand may influence a target brand through the mechanism proposed by the theories critical to context effect, such as Dimensional Range Overlap Model and Inclusion-Exclusion Model. The experimental designs were applied in three studies conducted to investigate the potential effect of co-branding on the product assessment. As a result, the finding of the studies demonstrated that, contrary to what co-branding relevant literature noted, assimilation and contrast could occur in response to the overlap or non-overlap between the interpretation range of target brand and context brand. The traditional wisdom and past literature suggested that as long as the target brand is co-exposed with a favorable context brand, the target brand would be evaluated better than when no favorable context brand is co-exposed. However, the finding of the current research indicated that contrast effect was likely to occur as well such that the target brand might be evaluated worse rather than better even when a favorable context brand was served as a co-brand.