Brand Partnership-Driven Positional Advantage: Conceptualization and Propositional Development

It seems common sense to believe that brand partnerships enable firms to achieve positional advantage by creating, maintaining, enhancing, and protecting their brands. Some brand partnerships, however, are more successful than others. Although academics and practitioners have paid attention to brand partnerships, few studies have been conducted to explain how brand partnerships succeed and what type of constituent brand(s) should be chosen. Using the resource-advantage theory of competition as an underlying framework, the present study develops an empirically testable model that builds on the resource-based, brand-equity, and relationship-marketing theories in order to conceptualize brand partnership elements and constituent brand characteristics and to present the drivers and effects of focal brand-equity on positional advantage. The model considers three key drivers of focal brand-equity (brand partnership intensity, concentration, and length) and constituent brand characteristics which include functional complementarity, hedonic congruity, and brand diversity. The current study posits how the levels of brand partnership intensity, concentration, and length influence focal brand equity and how a constituent brand’s functional complementarity, hedonic congruity, and brand diversity moderate the relationship between the drivers and the focal brand’s equity. The present study also posits that as focal brand-equity increases, positional advantage is enhanced. This paper offers important implications for theory and practice and concludes with the limitations of the current study and the directions of future research.