The Impact of Fit Measures on the Consumer Evaluation of New Co-Branded Products

A popular strategy currently employed for new product introductions is co-branding. Such a strategy allows a brand to innovate with the support of a partner brand. The present study investigates how consumers perceive a new product with two brands. Previous research focused on the logic of a brand combination by investigating the impact of the fit between both existing product categories (i.e., product-product-fit) and the fit between both brand images (i.e., brandbrand-fit) on the evaluation of a new co-branded product (Park et al. 1996; Simonin and Ruth 1998). However, no study has yet focused on the relationships between both brands and their existing product categories, and the specific new product that has been developed. The present article aims to improve the understanding of the potential benefits of co-branding by taking the role of the new product into account. The empirical study discussed in this article replicates and extends the model of Simonin and Ruth (1998) by adding two new measures to their model. These measures are related to the fit of both existing product categories with the new product (i.e., new-product-product-fit) and the fit of both brand images with the new product (i.e., newproduct-brand-fit). The results from this empirical study with 210 consumers in The Netherlands show that product-product-fit, brand-brand-fit and new-product-brand-fit have a significant positive impact on the evaluation of a new co-branded product. New-product-product-fit was not significantly related to consumer evaluations. In addition, the results show that consumers prefer a new co-branded product that can be clearly associated with one of the brands in the partnership so that it can be categorized unambiguously. This article discusses these findings and provides implications for research and managerial practice in the important and growing field of branddriven innovation.