How Do Emotionally Attached Consumers Evaluate Co-branded Products(NPB Alliance)?: A Comparison between Brand Attitude and Brand Attachment *

This study aims to empirically examine the differential impacts of brand attitude and brand attachment on consumers’ evaluation of co-branded products between retailers and manufacturers along with the interaction effects of gender. Two experiments were conducted using two virtual co-branded products, namely, Samsung digital cameras and Starbucks coffee, sold exclusively at two different major discount stores in South Korea. Emotionally attached experiment participants tended to evaluate the co-branded products more negatively than favorable participants (H 1), and this tendency was stronger among female experiment participants (H 2). This study confirms that brand attitude and brand attachment are two separate concepts, showing that each has distinct effects on the evaluation of co-branded products. Also, brand attachment is likely to be more frequently observed among female consumers than male consumers. This represents a new finding that warrants more in-depth research in the future. Brand partnerships between retailers and manufacturers should be conducted with extreme care to avoid damage to their brand image, particularly for manufacturers.