When do established CPG product brands benefit from a corporate-brand endorsement? The moderating role of consumer needs and brand familiarity
Journal of Product & Brand Management
ISSN: 1061-0421
Article publication date: 22 December 2022
Issue publication date: 1 March 2023
Abstract
Purpose
Many consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies have increased the visibility of their corporate brand to consumers by adding a corporate logo (e.g. Unilever “U”) on the packaging of their product brands (e.g. Dove, Domestos, Lipton, Knorr) and showcasing their product-brand portfolio in additional corporate-brand advertising. This paper aims to investigate consumer needs and product-brand familiarity as moderators of the impact of such a strong form of corporate-brand endorsement on the evaluation of established CPG product brands.
Design/methodology/approach
Two experiments with n = 670 and n = 118 respondents compare consumer evaluations of eight (Study 2: ten) product brands of a major German (Study 2: Anglo-Dutch) CPG company with versus without corporate-brand endorsement. The authors measure (Study 2: manipulate) the importance a consumer attaches to symbolic, experiential, relational and functional needs in brand choice.
Findings
Corporate-brand endorsement improves (decreases) the evaluation of established CGP product brands among consumer segments who base their brand choice in a CPG category predominantly on functional or relational (experiential or symbolic) needs. Furthermore, it exerts a negative effect on product brands among heavy category users due to their higher product-brand familiarity.
Practical implications
Rather than endorsing all its product brands with the corporate brand, a CPG company should do so selectively, depending on the positioning and target audience of each product brand.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to demonstrate the importance of consumer needs and product-brand familiarity in corporate-brand endorsement.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the editors of the Journal of Product & Brand Management as well as two anonymous reviewers for their highly valuable suggestions and comments. They also thank a multinational CPG company for the support in collecting the data of Study 1.
Citation
Strebinger, A. and Otter, T. (2023), "When do established CPG product brands benefit from a corporate-brand endorsement? The moderating role of consumer needs and brand familiarity", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 32 No. 3, pp. 500-516. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-08-2021-3614
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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