Les adolescents et les marques : étude de leurs réactions à la stratégie de co-marquage
(2009)
Files
AdobeAcrobat.pdf
Restricted Access - Adobe PDF
- 4.49 MB
ANNEXES.pdf
Restricted Access - Adobe PDF
- 2.39 MB
Details
- Authors
- Supervisors
- Derbaix, Christian
- Abstract
- (en) This PhD dissertation is positioned in marketing management research and more specifically in consumer behavior. The thesis’ main objective concerns the study of adolescents’ reactions to the co-branding strategy. In this context, three aims are followed: - To identify important variables that are considered by adolescents when they evaluate a co-branded product and develop an attitude and a purchase intention for this type of product compared to another product signed by only one brand. - To study the influence of some psychological and socio-demographic variables in the co-branded product’s evaluation process. Brand sensitivity, enduring involvement, age and sex are variables that have never been studied in a context of brand alliance. - To examine the spillover effects of co-branding on partner brands and determine the nature of those effects. In marketing research, there is a significant gap in this field. First of all, adolescents were not considered as a real segment of consumers until recently. They were usually considered only along with other segments like children or adults, while in fact they have distinct cognitive, affective and conative reactions. In addition, research on brand alliance is exclusively focused on adult consumers. Given that we know that adolescents develop specific relations with brands, we think that the study of adolescents’ reactions to co-branding will bring a lot of interesting results in understanding adolescent consumer behavior. The dissertation follows a positive research methodology and is structured in two parts. The exploratory part is made up of two chapters: the first one presents an interdisciplinary literature review and the second one explores qualitatively the adolescents’ reactions to co-branding throughout 94 individual interviews. The empirical part contains four chapters. First, we present some research hypotheses by bringing forward the major trends of the exploratory study. Then, we develop two measurement scales adapted to the adolescent population. In a third chapter, we conduct two experiments with pre-test and post-test measures conducted over the course of three meetings with 382 adolescents. The most interesting results of this research are the following: - The relevancy of the co-branded product cannot be overlooked in explaining the adolescents’ attitude and purchase intention for this product. Relevancy is defined as the product’s added value compared to its competitors. - The adolescents’ prior attitudes toward the partners’ brands influence their evaluation but only in terms of attitude toward the co-branded product (not purchase intention). Moreover, the brand status doesn’t matter because the primary brand (the brand originating from the product category wherein the alliance is launched) and the secondary brand don’t behave differently in the explanation of brand purchase or attitude toward the co-branded product. - The type of co-branding (ingredient branding or co-naming) in other words, the role endorsed by the secondary brand in the alliance doesn’t influence the evaluation of the co-branded product made by the adolescents. In consequence, one type of co-branding doesn’t have to be favored when targeting the adolescents. - The « early » adolescents (12-15 years’ old) are more receptive to co-branding than the « late » adolescents (16 years’ old and older). Since we know that the younger group attaches more importance to social approbation in their consumption practices, this result is not surprising. - In terms of the alliance’s spillover effects on partners, the exposure to a co-branded product doesn’t provoke any major brand change nor a transfer between partner brands’ associations. Nevertheless, there was only a mere exposure to the product during the experiments, and interesting results emerge from our research, for example, a brand associations’ transfer between partners by a third of adolescents or a significantly brand attitude change only for adolescents who have a weak attitude toward the co-branded product. In conclusion, the exposure to co-branding could involve real significant consequences for the partners and could even be risky in the long term. - Finally, from an ethical point of view, this PhD dissertation leads to a better understanding of adolescent consumer behavior. The importance attached to the co-branded product’s relevancy, among other things, is proof that adolescents have become well-informed consumers and are more and more sensitive to a responsible consumption. In consequence, companies have to set themselves limits in their marketing actions / strategy. That doesn’t mean that co-branding targeted to adolescents must be forbidden. On the contrary, collaborations between brands allow companies to develop a competitive advantage, but on one condition: that the presence of the second brand be relevant for the adolescents, in other words, that its’ added value has to be real and perceptible.
- Affiliations
FUCaM Sciences de gestion
Citations
Leheut, E. (2009). Les adolescents et les marques : étude de leurs réactions à la stratégie de co-marquage. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/128655