Challenging coopetitive branding alliances : a study on how coopetitive branding affects consumers’ brand image

Sammanfattning: The increased competitive intensity in several global markets has encouraged firms which traditionally compete, to also collaborate with each other, that is coopetitive branding alliances. Coopetitive branding has, to the best of our knowledge, not been researched from a consumer perspective.Does this mean that consumers remain unaffected when two competitors all of a sudden also collaborate?The purpose of this thesis is to explore how consumers’ brand images can be affected by firms’coopetitive branding strategies. With support from existing alliance literature and an empirical studycomprised of four focus groups, an abductive research approach is adopted.The findings indicate four distinct parameters, which can influence an alliance’s outcome, from theperspective of a consumer’s positive or negative brand image - which is a vital component in consumer-based brand equity. The contradictory nature of simultaneous competition and collaborationmakes coopetitive branding more or less desirable, from a consumer perspective, under differentcircumstances, which need to be acknowledged and managed by the partnering firms. A suggestionfor future research is to examine a wider consumer segment and not only students, to validate thetransferability of our findings.The results contribute to the strategic alliances theory, since existing research has not examinedthe consumer perspective and brand image in relation to coopetitive branding alliances. The resultscan also provide managerial guidelines for firms that wish to understand what elements of a coopetitive branding alliance creates value with consumers.