Building Brand Equity Through Combined Communicational Effects

Sponsorship research has examined how this important communications tool helps brands build and increase their equity. Complementary effects of sponsorship and articulation (that consists in explaining the link between the sponsee and the sponsor) have recently generated some attention. However, research on other combined communicational effects with sponsorship remains scant. This paper focuses on a very simple yet unstudied technique of leveraging a sponsorship: the mention of competition. This is the first attempt to measure the combined effects of sponsorship and the mention of competition on attitude.

The sponsee and its competitor are strongly linked in the associative memory network formed by consumers. Thus, it is expected that sponsorship facilitates the comparison and categorization between the sponsee and its competitor if both are mentioned in the context of the brand alliance. The mention of a competitor who failed in securing sponsorship increases the relational processing of information and eases the transfer of equity from the competitor to the sponsee. A high-equity sponsor should provide an indirect link from the competitor equity to the sponsee equity: if an event is sponsored by a high-equity brand such as Nike, the mention of another competitive event that failed to secure this sponsorship should reinforce the prestige of the sponsee. Therefore, sponsee equity should appear as higher than its competitor’s. This effect should be higher if the mentioned competitor has a high-level equity than if it has a low-level equity.

In the case of a high-equity sponsor, as the most direct and strong link should be between the sponsee and the sponsor, it is expected that the mention of a competitor is still beneficial when the mentioned competitor equity is low. In the case of an incongruent low-equity sponsor, we expect the event to be negatively impacted by the inconsistency within the two pairings (sponsee/sponsor and sponsor/competitor) as the mention of a high-equity competitor would increase the variance. This variance would make the categorization impossible as the brands are dissimilar at two levels (in terms of congruence sponsee/sponsor and in terms of equity level sponsor/competitor). This would introduce an equity variance comparable to a quality variance within a brand portfolio.

A 2 (sponsee/sponsor congruence: congruent/incongruent) × 2 (sponsor equity level: high-equity/low-equity) × 2 (competitor equity level: high-equity/low-equity) experimental design was used, with two control groups (no mention of competitor with high-equity congruent sponsor/ no mention of competitor with high-equity incongruent sponsor). The analysis (ANOVA) revealed a significant three-way interaction between the sponsee/sponsor congruence, the sponsor equity and the competitor equity on the sponsee equity. For instance, in the case of a congruent sponsorship, the sponsee equity is higher when a high-equity competitor is mentioned than when no competitor is mentioned. The mention of a high-equity competitor has a slightly positive effect on the sponsee equity in the case of an incongruent sponsorship. Our results show that in combining sponsorship with the mention of a competitor, a company can easily reinforce the impact of a brand alliance, in a very cost-friendly way. This research considered for the first time how sponsorship may positively link two competitive brands in increasing equity transfer.