Co-branding Strategies of High-Tech Products and Luxury Brands: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

The aim of this study is to analyze the different components of consumers’ attitude towards co-branded products. We focus on the cognitive and the affective components. It is getting popular to find co-branded products that include brands belonging to very distant product categories; besides, product fit and brand fit also might assume a different relevance. We focus on the specific category of high-tech, luxury co-branded products (HLCPs) to explore consumers’ purchasing intention toward this alliance. Finally, we compare the behavior of consumers from two different countries – Spain and Taiwan – in order to assess the role played by cultural features on the purchasing process of co-branded products. Therefore, it is likely to hypothesize that the buying behavior of Spanish consumers differs from that of Taiwanese consumers, in the purchase of HLCPs.

The method of empirical analysis is a survey and took an innovative direction and analyzed consumers’ behavior with respect to genuine products existing in the marketplace (specifically, “Samsung Giorgio Armani” and “LG Prada” cell phones). Two different versions of questionnaire were prepared and distributed to respondents randomly. Participants were 311 and 528 undergraduate students in Taiwan and Spain respectively. Employing seven-point Liker scale to each measurement.

Reliabilities were then assessed and confirmed. Path analysis and a multi-group analysis among factors in two countries were performed. Different parameter estimates failed to be statistically significant in different samples, thus we eventually considered two constrained versions of the general theoretical model, except for some direct paths fixed to zero.

The results show that Spanish and Taiwanese consumers do share some common opinions about HLCPs, even though several differences remain. It appears that Spanish consumers mainly consider product fit, while Taiwanese consumers mainly base their decisions on brand fit. The magnitude of the effect of brand fit on the cognitive response is larger for Taiwan than for Spain. Overall, these results partly contradict previous evidence on the role that brands and fashion exert on consumers coming from individualistic cultures. Provided that Spanish consumers mainly base their purchasing decisions on the affective response, and, on the contrary, Taiwanese consumers focus on the cognitive response.