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The purpose of this paper is to examine the underlying mechanism of the spillover effect from a service brand alliance to its parent brand at the post-consumption stage.

Online surveys were used to collect both qualitative and quantitative data from participants of an actual event. Conceptual models were developed and tested on two cross-sectional samples using structural equation modeling.

Results demonstrate perceived brand contribution and consumer involvement mediate the relationship between the service brand alliance experience and the evaluation of its parent brand at the post-consumption stage. While perceived brand fit had an indirect effect on the parent brand, the spillover was mostly driven by service alliance experience and perceived brand contribution.

Findings indicate brand managers should focus on consumers’ brand experience of the service brand alliance to drive spillover evaluations to the parent brand, and organizations could extend brand alliances to services with low category fit to the parent brand if consumers are to have a good experience with the service brand alliance.

This research extends findings on brand alliance research that was based on hypothetical brands and indicated that the spillover effect from a brand alliance to the parent brand is influenced by perceived brand fit. The findings highlight the importance of consumer experiences in driving the spillover effect at the post-consumption stage, where consumers evaluate brand relationships from a value-added perspective that goes beyond the service category fit.

Retailer-brand collaborations (e.g. Target–Lilly Pulitzer) attract media attention and generate excitement, and may encourage buying the product right away rather than waiting until a sale. To clearly establish factors that contribute to consumers' urge to purchase retailer-brand collaborations, the purpose of this study is to test the effects of: (1) collaboration duration (limited edition vs ongoing) and (2) perceived retailer-brand fit (high vs low) on consumers' urgency to buy.

Three experimental studies (n = 499) manipulate and test the effect of collaboration duration (Study 1), perceived retailer-brand fit (Study 2) and the combined effect (Study 3) on consumers' urgency to buy.

Findings indicate that urgency to buy retailer-brand collaborations are favourable when products are offered as limited edition versus ongoing (Study 1), when there is high-perceived fit versus low-perceived fit between retailer and brand partners (Study 2) and when both conditions are true (Study 3).

To enhance consumers' urgency to buy retailer-brand collaborations, the partnerships should be limited in duration (vs collaborating in an ongoing fashion). Additionally brands and retailers need to strategically align with well-fitting partners.

Despite the prevalence and success of retailer-brand collaborations in industry, research on such collaboration is surprising scant. Additionally, while previous studies often measure purchase intentions as consumers' response, an understanding of factors that discourage consumers from delaying their purchase (i.e. factors that lead to urgency to buy) help to identify strategies to cultivate greater profits.

Many fashion brands employ growth strategies that involve strategically aligning with a retailer to offer exclusive co-brands that vary in duration and perceived fit. While growth and publicity are enticing, pursuing collaboration may change consumers' evaluation of the brand. Utilising commodity and categorisation theory, this research tests how a brand may successfully approach a co-brand with a retailer.

Three experimental studies manipulate and test the effect of co-brand duration (limited edition vs ongoing) (Study 1), the degree of brand-retailer fit (high vs low) (Study 2), and its combined effect (Study 3) on changes in consumers' brand evaluation.

Results reveal that consumers' evaluations of brands become more favourable when: (1) brand-retailer co-brand make products available on a limited edition (vs ongoing) basis (Study 1), (2) consumers perceive a high (vs low) degree of brand-retailer fit (Study 2) and (3) both conditions are true (Study 3).

In light of commodity and categorisation theory, this study helps to understand the effectiveness of a brand-retailer co-branding strategy.

To increase brand evaluations, brands should engage in a limited edition strategy, rather than ongoing when collaborating with retailers. It is also important to select an appropriately fitting retailer for a strategic partnership when creating a co-brand.

While previous studies highlight the importance of perceived fit upon extension, perceived fit between brand and retailer co-brand had yet to be investigated. Additionally, this research investigates changes in brand evaluations to more accurately understand how co-branding strategies impact the brand.

This study aims to examine the effects of perceived product–brand fit and brand type on consumer evaluations of wearable smart masks’ technological, aesthetic and social attributes and how these affect consumers’ attitudes and intentions to use.

Through an experimental approach, a total of 240 US consumers’ evaluations of smart masks are compared according to perceived product–brand fit (high vs low) and brand type (electronics vs fashion).

The results showed that high perceived product–brand fit increases consumers’ evaluations, while brand type did not significantly affect consumers’ evaluations. Among various attributes, social acceptability had the greatest influence on consumers’ attitude and intention to use. Perceived ease of use, however, positively influenced attitude but negatively influenced intention to use.

As consumers’ interest in smart health-care wearables increases and air pollution is a serious issue across countries, research on wearable smart masks is being facilitated. Smart masks refer to the digitalized, reusable wearable masks that provide protection and health-care functions. However, their market penetration is still limited. To close this gap between smart mask technology and the market, this study examines how perceived fit and brand type can be used to enhance consumer evaluations.

This study aims to investigate the interaction between branding strategies, levels of perceived fit and consumer innovativeness on the evaluation of new products from the perspective of situational strength.

Two experiments were conducted to empirically test the hypotheses.

A significant three-way interaction of branding strategy, perceived fit and consumer innovativeness on the evaluation of the new products was found. A significant two-way interaction of branding strategy and perceived fit was also found. Situational clarity fully mediates the relationship between branding strategy and consumer product evaluations at various fit levels.

The theory of situational strength may shed light on the selection of target market when managers launch new products. Innovative consumers are the target market for the new products under new branding or low fit sub-branding; under brand extension or high fit sub-branding, consumers are the target for the new products regardless of their degree of innovativeness.

This is the first work to apply situational strength theory to a new product evaluation context. The theory provides a unified framework for explaining the cognitive processes involved when consumers use and combine marketing cues (i.e. branding strategies and fit levels) to evaluate new products; it also facilitates evaluating how the effects of consumer innovativeness are accentuated or attenuated based on various combinations of marketing cues. Most research on the evaluation of new products has examined the influence of consumer innovativeness, perceived fit or branding strategies as distinct entities. This study simultaneously examined the three.

The purpose of this study is to examine how perceived fit between a line/brand extension and its parent brand moderates the evaluation of two economically identical promotions, i.e. buy one get one free (BOGOF) and 50 per cent off. A travel-sized painkiller is the product in this study.

A 2 (perceived fit: high or low) × 2 (promotion type: BOGOF or 50 per cent off) between-subjects design is used in this study. Participants, who are college students, are randomly assigned to the four experimental conditions.

The results indicate that parent brand attitude is more closely associated with line-extension attitude than with brand-extension attitude, line extension leads to lower perceived performance risk and higher stockpiling tendency than brand extension and BOGOF is preferred over 50 per cent off for line extension but 50 per cent off is preferred over BOGOF for brand extension.

For a low-price, non-conspicuous and stock-up product category such as painkillers, marketers should consider using BOGOF to promote a line extension and 50 per cent off to promote a brand extension. It is important to explore in future research as to how the findings can be applied to other product categories, other promotion types, other packages and non-student consumers.

This study is the first that examines how perceived fit of a line/brand extension moderates the evaluation of economically identical promotions. It integrates the literature of line/brand extension, perceived performance risk and prospect theory to advance the research on sales promotions for new products.

This study aims at examining the role of the e-store brand personality congruence/incongruence of a multichannel apparel retailer in the formation of consumers' perceived e-store brand fit and e-store patronage intention, based on the concept of image congruence.

An online survey was conducted with a US national sample of 458 female consumers (20–50 years old) who had shopped for clothing online.

Results revealed that e-store brand personality incongruence in three personality dimensions had a negative impact on consumers' e-store patronage intention directly as well as indirectly by reducing the consumers' global perception of the e-store brand fit. Further, the retailer's relevance to the consumer moderated the relationship between the perceived e-store brand fit and e-store patronage intention in that this relationship was significantly greater among consumers with a high (vs low) perceived self-relevance of the retail brand.

The findings highlight the importance of symbolically integrated cross-channel brand management for multichannel apparel retailers by clearly identifying their brand personality and carefully crafting it into their e-store interface design and e-store visual merchandising to convey the brand personality.

This study expands the application of image congruence to the cross-channel image congruence phenomenon in multichannel retailing environments by examining the e-store brand image congruence employing both direct and indirect approaches.

The purpose of this study is to explore how event volunteers, athletes and onsite spectators perceive the impact of sport event sponsorship on future purchase intentions of the event sponsor brand.

The research problem was based on propositions by Novais and Arcodia (2013) and proposes relationships between sponsor–event fit, brand attitude, perceived brand quality and sponsor brand purchase intentions. Data were collected from 352 Greek sport event consumers from the 2013 Classic Marathon event, in Athens, Greece, using onsite surveys targeting non-sponsor brand consumer spectators, volunteers and athletes.

The results reveal that sponsor–event fit indirectly influenced sponsor brand purchase intentions via brand attitude and brand quality across all three groups. However, the fit did not directly influence perceived brand quality of the sponsor across all three groups and directly influenced purchase intentions of the athlete group.

Because of the duration of the event (one day), the sample sizes were not very large. In addition, the study was delimited on one sponsor from a single sport event. Therefore, the findings need to be tested with larger samples and additional sponsors and events to arrive to more robust conclusion about the purchase intention formation and its antecedents across multiple sport event consumer groups.

This study explores the power of sponsor–event fit among non-consumers of the sponsor brand and how the “interface” of event consumption through the lenses of three groups, namely, volunteer, spectator and athlete, influences brand attitude, perceived brand quality and sponsor brand purchase intentions.

This paper aims to understand the reciprocal spill‐over effects of brand extensions by testing a comprehensive model that gathers both the brand extension evaluation process and the later influence on brand image.

Data were obtained from 699 face‐to‐face interviews conducted in Spain. Structural equation modelling was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results indicate that brand extensions have feedback effects on brand image depending on the attitude toward the new product and perceived image fit. Consumer attitude depends, in turn, on initial brand associations, perceived category fit, perceived image fit and consumer innovativeness. Brand familiarity also shows indirect effects.

The model should be tested with extensions of the same (line extensions) or different categories. It is also necessary to analyse non‐fictitious products, and to take different moderating effects into account.

The results suggest how to protect the brand image from unsuitable extension strategies. The paper shows what kind of perceived fit is more important for consumers as well as the direct and indirect role of several variables.

The paper extends previous research by proposing a complete framework that considers the factors that influence either the attitude to the extension or the attitude to the extended brand.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of perceived fit and brand personality as means of building the brand equity of the sponsor in a basketball sponsorship setting both for team fans (fans) and fans of a rival team (rivals).

The sponsorship deal between Microsoft (X-BOX), a global software company, and Panathinaikos BC, a popular basketball team located in Athens, Greece, was selected for this examination. Empirical data were collected through self-administered questionnaires from 222 fans and 271 rivals. Structural equation modeling was run to test the research hypotheses.

Results provided evidence that brand personality mediates the effect of fans’ perceived fit evaluations on brand equity variables. No mediation of brand personality was found for rivals, as perceived fit did not significantly affect either positively or negatively any of the brand equity variables for those study participants.

The timing of data collection, which took place a short period after the sponsorship deal was announced, the low degree of rivalry reported as well as the fact that sponsorship activation initiatives were not taken into consideration are seen as limitations of this study. Suggestions for future research that would address each of these limitations are offered.

The study contributed theoretically to sport sponsorship literature by introducing the concept of brand personality as a means to enhance sponsors’ brand equity in a basketball sponsorship setting for both team fans and rivals. Interesting managerial implications have emerged for marketing managers of both sponsors and sponsees.

This is one of the very few studies that propose a process by which sponsors can deal with rivals’ negative associations, uncovering opportunities that may exist for companies in sponsoring competing teams.