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Ingredient branding and feedback effects: The impact of product outcomes, initial parent brand strength asymmetry, and parent brand role

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Abstract

Ingredient branding is a popular strategy involving two “parent” brands developing a co-branded product, called an ingredient branding offering (IBO). Drawing on extant brand literatures, we investigate how brand feedback effects are influenced by (1) the initial brand strength among the parent brands (low vs. high), (2) parent brand roles (whether the brand is the host or ingredient), and (3) IBO success and failure. Three experiments indicate that IBO success positively affects both parent brands, but the positive feedback is much more substantial for the weaker (vs. the stronger) brand. Under the failure condition, the strong ingredient brand is the only parent that is somewhat protected from an IBO failure. All the other IBO possibilities—in terms of brand strength and parent role—suffer from substantial negative feedback and share a high level of responsibility for the failure. Managerial and theoretical implications are drawn from these results.

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Notes

  1. In this paper, we use the term “brand strength” to refer to a brand’s familiarity and favorability (e.g., Aaker 1991).

  2. The outcome manipulation was checked using a separate sample consisting of 43 subjects.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Washington State University Department of Marketing, Kelly D. Martin, Pingsheng Tong, Jeffrey Joireman, and Brian Gillespie for their assistance and valuable comments on previous drafts of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Marketing Department, School of Business Administration, University of Houston-Victoria, 14000 University Blvd, Sugar Land, TX, 77479, USA

    Jeffrey P. Radighieri

  2. Department of Marketing, College of Business, Washington State University, Pullman, USA

    Babu John Mariadoss & Jean L. Johnson

  3. Department of Marketing, HEC Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Yany Grégoire

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  1. Jeffrey P. Radighieri
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  2. Babu John Mariadoss
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  3. Yany Grégoire
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  4. Jean L. Johnson
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Correspondence to Jeffrey P. Radighieri.

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Radighieri, J.P., John Mariadoss, B., Grégoire, Y. et al. Ingredient branding and feedback effects: The impact of product outcomes, initial parent brand strength asymmetry, and parent brand role. Mark Lett 25, 123–138 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-013-9231-8

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