Strategic brand alliances: implications of ingredient branding for national and private label brands

Current research on brand alliances has focused primarily on alliances between two known, national brands. However, there is significant benefit to both parties in an alliance between a national brand and a private brand. Such alliances are gaining importance in the industry but have not been studied by marketers. The basic question explored in this study is whether using a national brand ingredient can benefit a private brand without hurting the national brand. First, a theoretical framework to explain how consumers may react to such an alliance is presented. Next, an experiment was conducted which showed that a private brand with a name brand ingredient was evaluated more positively. However, the evaluation of the national brand was not diminished by this association. Implications and future research directions are discussed.