品牌联合的研究进展

通过从影响消费者对品牌联合态度评价的因素、品牌联合的反馈效应以及影响合伙品牌对品牌联合的相对贡献3个方面,对国内外品牌联合的相关研究进行了总结,并在此基础上提出了进一步研究的方向,以推动品牌联合研究在国内的开展。     

Negative spillover effects in brand cooperation

This research investigates negative spillover effects on brand trust and purchase intentions due to violations of implicit or explicit rules within brand cooperation (transgressions). In particular, this research examines a joint new product launch activity of a focal brand and a partner brand. Study 1, an experimental study with brand community members of the focal brand and different transgression scenarios, reveals fewer spillover effects on the focal brand when the partner brand is responsible for the transgression, and discovers more negative spillover effects on the partner brand when the focal brand causes the transgression. In other words, brand community members transfer the responsibility for the transgression to an external cause. Study 2 explores different forms of crisis communication in the context of a product launch delay and finds that a denial by the focal brand is more effective with respect to image restoration than a denial by the partner brand. However, when both brands deny responsibility at the same time, the denial negatively influences trust in both brands.     

新创企业品牌联合伙伴选择的计算实验研究

品牌联合是新创企业克服其成长劣势的有效策略之一。为提高新创企业选择品牌联合伙伴的成功率，基于复杂适应系统理论构建了新创企业品牌联合企业主体行为活动的基本模型和主体之间、主体与环境之间的交互模型；研究了外部竞争环境、合伙企业的企业类型、品牌资产、关系承诺和联合匹配性等特征对联合形成的影响。结果表明：在外部环境动态变化时，越来越多的新创企业会选择品牌联合策略，而其选择成熟企业还是新创企业作为联合伙伴，并不受外部环境变化的影响。在品牌联合系统中，作为核心的新创企业选择合伙企业时，其自身特征并不影响其是否采取联合策略；不管核心企业自身特征如何，均优先选择成熟企业作为联合伙伴；同时，合伙企业的关系承诺对联合伙伴选择的影响最显著，品牌资产次之，而联合匹配性影响不显著。候选企业在回应核心企业的联合请求时，其接受/拒绝联合的决策主要取决于核心企业对其评价的结果，其次是核心企业的品牌资产。研究结果对新创企业的管理实践具有重要的参考价值。     

基于知识创造和知识溢出的R&D联盟的动态模型

本文通过对R&D联盟中企业间知识创造和知识溢出的分析,给出了知识存量的一般表示方法,并将参与企业的知识投入和开放水平视为内生变量,构造了知识联盟R&D两阶段的非合作动态博弈模型,提出了在对称的情况下纳什均衡存在并有唯一解的条件,分析了知识投入和知识开放水平在联盟不同时期对企业均衡利润的影响,并通过案例对部分命题提供佐证。最后,在模型假设和模型思想方面进行了一些简单探讨。     

Coping with Diversity in Alliances for Innovation: The Role of Relational Social Capital and Knowledge Codifiability

Alliances are increasingly considered a key element for innovation, especially in knowledge‐intensive firms. While this is true, the mere membership to alliances does not explain innovation performance, and thus the alliance's characteristics that determine high performance must be examined. This research address the question of how the diversity of partners in a certain alliance for innovation affects innovation performance, and how this influence can be moderated by certain characteristics, such as the relational dimension of social capital and the type of knowledge shared among partners. The empirical analysis of a sample of 90 biotech companies shows that there is an inverted U‐shaped relationship between alliance partner diversity and innovation performance and confirms the positive moderating effects of relational social capital and knowledge codifiability. These findings contribute to the current research on alliances for innovation by providing empirical evidence on why some alliances perform better than others. Also, the results suggest that the study of alliance partner diversity, as a determinant of alliance performance, should not be addressed in isolation.     

Costs of partner search and selection in strategic alliances

This study examines the costs associated with alliance partner search and selection as well as their antecedents. Based on transaction cost economics and the network perspective on inter-organizational relationships, the findings drawing on survey-based data from a sample of 83 firms in the German telecommunications industry reveal that partner search and selection costs are closely connected but differentially affected by task- and company-related factors. When firms must make alliance-specific investments, search and selection costs increase. A firm’s number of current alliances decreases search and selection costs, whereas neither alliance scope nor firm performance significantly affect them. Additional analyses show that alliance-specific investments especially increase search costs but do not affect selection costs, whereas a firm’s performance decreases search costs but does not reduce selection costs.     

The Dynamics of Research Alliances: Examining the Effect of Alliance Experience and Partner Characteristics on the Speed of Alliance Entry in the Biotech Industry

Few studies have moved beyond the dyadic level of an ongoing alliance and examined factors contributing to the success of entering a series of alliances. In this paper we expect biotechnology firms over time to learn from their alliance experience and to develop general alliance capabilities. Specifically, we expect the speed with which they enter into new research alliances, e.g. their alliance formation rate, to be affected by capabilities built up in prior alliances as well as by characteristics of their partners. We use longitudinal event history data for the complete population of US biotechnology firms for 1973–1999 to test four hypotheses about factors affecting the rate of new alliance formation. Our analysis suggests that the speed of entering research alliances is affected by prior experience of the focal firm, but not by partner characteristics. Our findings provide evidence that biotech firms learn how to learn more effectively from multiple research alliances; however, this effect is generalized and not tied to specific characteristics of the alliance partner.     

民族品牌跨国并购后的品牌战略研究——弱势品牌视角

2009年,中国民族品牌借全球金融危机之机,为加快其全球化的步伐,花费重金并购国外强势品牌。然而,"蛇吞象"式的跨国并购背后却是消费者的认知失调。同时,国内外现有研究针对改善该认知失调的品牌战略研究十分有限。因此,本文基于认知一致性和顾客品牌资产(CBBE)理论,从弱势品牌视角出发,围绕如何有效减轻"蛇吞象"后消费者的认知失调,运用焦点小组、个人访谈、实验和LME模型,最终得到了一些重要的发现:品牌要素战略(名称变化)、营销支持战略(价格维持或降低)以及次级联想杠杆战略(原产地保留或去除)都对并后品牌绩效产生显著影响。此外,本研究还揭示了消费者认知失调的改善机制,即品牌契合度在减轻消费者失调的并后品牌战略交互效应对品牌绩效的影响中起着重要的中介作用。这些成果既可以丰富现有品牌战略管理理论,也为民族品牌国际化提供实践指导。     

Equity alliances,stages of product development,and alliance instability

The purpose of this research is to analyze the stability of strategic alliances initiated at different stages of the new product development process and to determine the appropriateness of different governance structures (e.g., joint ventures, minority equity alliances, non-equity alliances). Specifically, we argue that the minority equity form of alliance is an inherently unstable structure for product development partnerships. Key findings of this study are: (a) minority equity alliances are more likely to be terminated within 5 years than joint ventures and non-equity alliances, (b) alliances are more likely to be terminated if they are initiated in the early and late stages of product development and less likely to be terminated if they are initiated in the mid-stages of product development, and (c) alliances are more likely to become acquisitions if they are initiated in the mid-stages of product development and less likely to become acquisitions if they are initiated in the early and late stages of product development.     

International alliance formation and stock market responses:: Industry globalization as an environmental contingency

This study examines the effects of the degree of industry globalization on international alliance formation in terms of the type of alliance chosen by partner firms and stock market responses to the chosen type of alliance. Using a sample of 244 international alliances formed between U.S. and non-U.S. firms for the 1992–97 period, we find that nonjoint venture (joint venture) alliances take place relatively more frequently in global (multidomestic) industries than in multidomestic (global) industries. We also find that in global industries, abnormal returns to nonjoint venture partners are relatively greater than those to joint venture partners, whereas in multidomestic industries, abnormal returns to nonjoint venture partners are relatively smaller, though insignificant, than those to joint venture partners. Our findings suggest that the degree of industry globalization plays an important role in explaining which type of international alliance is likely to be chosen by partner firms when entering an alliance and how stock markets tend to respond to the chosen type of alliance.     

Does umbrella branding really work? Investigating cross-category brand loyalty

Numerous studies on the drivers of brand extension success found evidence that parent-brand characteristics and the fit between parent brand and transfer product are the main and most influential factors driving brand extension success. However, the ability of a brand to transfer its brand loyal customers from the parent to the extension category has been widely neglected. Brand loyalty can be regarded as a consequence of the underlying assumption of customers transferring their quality perceptions, their brand knowledge, and their experience with the brand from one category to the other. We find empirical evidence that consumers who are loyal to the brand in the leading (parent) product category show a higher probability to be loyal to that same brand in another (extension) category compared to those consumers who are not loyal in the leading category. Moreover, as the overall success of the extension includes positive retroactive effects of the extension product on the parent product or brand, the arising question is whether there are differences between extension product categories regarding their attachment to the parent category and their ability to stimulate brand loyal purchases in the parent category, i.e., speaking of ‘leader’ and ‘follower’ categories in terms of brand loyal purchase behavior. This might even hold true for the relationship of any two categories the brand competes.     

Improving the Progress of Research & Development (R&D) Projects by Selecting an Optimal Alliance Structure and Partner Type

This paper extends the study of alliance governance structure by examining what alliance structure, coordination mechanisms and partner type best enhance the likelihood of Research and Development (R&D) progress or performance. We specially focus on the coordination and interaction mechanism of alliances, through which we classify the alliance governance structures in order to reflect the more complex alliance types and contracts used in today's R&D. Using data from 255 biopharmaceuticals between the years 2000 and 2004, we found that, ceteris paribus, a moderate degree of inter‐partner interaction and a moderately complex (non‐equity‐based) alliance contract contributes more to a better R&D alliance performance than those structures that are too simple or too organizationally embedded (e.g. equity joint ventures), which possibly increase the risk of misalignment and miscommunication between allies. In addition, due to the reduced opportunism and the diverse resource (e.g. technology) pooled in the alliance, allying with diverse organizational partners such as non‐profit research institutes and universities is more likely to enhance the R&D performance. Our findings provide insightful strategic implications to practitioners in designing an appropriate alliance governance structure and choosing the right partner type for a successful R&D collaboration.     

消费者品牌忠诚对品牌商再制造市场策略的影响

独立再制造商IR的市场进入给品牌商带来了显著的竞争压力。品牌忠诚源于消费者对某个产品品牌的信任和特殊情感,在产品选择中具有明显的倾向性和排他性,进一步增加了品牌商市场策略的复杂性。针对这一现象,本文采用博弈论结合数值仿真研究了消费者具有品牌忠诚特性下的品牌商再制造市场策略问题。建立并求解了IR不进入且品牌商不再制造（n）、IR不进入且品牌商再制造（nR）、IR进入且品牌商不再制造（nr）、IR进入且品牌商再制造（nrR）四种市场模式,对模型结果进行了灵敏度分析,并探讨了各成员的模式偏好。研究表明：新产品价格、品牌再制品价格、一般再制品价格均与品牌忠诚度正相关;品牌忠诚度的提高一定增大品牌商的利润,但不一定会降低IR利润;当新产品制造成本较高时,品牌商的模式偏好始终为nR$\succ$nrR$\succ$n$\succ$nr,较低时模式偏好受到消费者品牌忠诚度的大小的影响;nr和nrR模式下,品牌忠诚度仅可能提高品牌消费者剩余,但会降低普通消费者剩余、总消费者剩余和社会总福利。     

Credibly reducing information asymmetry: Signaling on economic or environmental value by environmental alliances

This article focuses on strategic alliances that strive for economic profit while contributing to environmental sustainability. These so-called environmental alliances operate on a spectrum between the goals of economic and environmental value. New environmental alliances signal in announcements to their external stakeholders where they position themselves on this spectrum of alliance goals in order to reduce information asymmetry and enhance their credibility. In this article, we predict the type of external signal that environmental alliances send by studying alliance processes and structures that embed the latent alliance goals. We built an original dataset by combining data on 389 environmental alliances from the SDC Platinum database for the period 2013–2017 and data on signals in 650 alliance announcements. Our findings show that announcements signaling on economic value are mainly used by environmental production and marketing joint ventures, thereby reducing the information asymmetry on their latent goal of economic value. Conversely, announcements signaling on environmental value are mainly used by environmental R&D contracts that focus on the latent goal of environmental value. Our article thus illustrates that alliances aim to enhance their credibility by achieving signal fit between external signals and latent alliance goals. Even though environmental alliances operate on a spectrum of economic and environmental value, we demonstrate that they prefer to avoid sending mixed messages and hence only signal on one of the alliance goals. Our article contributes to the literature on environmental alliances by applying signaling theory to explain these counterintuitive findings and to improve our understanding of how environmental alliances aim for credibility through their communication on their alliance goals.     

Agent and Task Complexity in Multilateral Alliances: The Safeguarding Role of Equity Governance

Multilateral alliances are an inherently complex organizational form; managing these complexities is particularly difficult for alliance partners because alliances are plagued by both internal and external uncertainty. Using insights from transaction cost economics, our study identifies, articulates and tests different forms of alliance complexity and their impacts on alliance governance structure. Specifically, we investigate two forms of alliance complexity: agent and task. We decompose agent complexity into organizational and partner complexity, and decompose task complexity into geographic, transaction and technological complexity. Using a sample of 327 trilateral alliances, the most frequent form of multilateral alliances, we find that three forms of alliance complexity involving internal uncertainty (organizational, partner and technological complexity) favor equity-based governance, whereas external uncertainty in the form of geographic complexity discourages equity-based governance.     

Developing strategic alliances: A conceptual framework for successful co-operation

Due to dramatically increasing global competition and in the light of Europe '92, companies have to concentrate on their particular competitive advantages and on those business activities they know well. The market, however, asks for an ever increasing range of products and services. ‘System deals’ include — along with a product — attractive sideline services, like project management, system implementation or supply of related products. In many cases, entering these markets or achieving technological breakthroughs is only possible with a strong partner.These recent developments forced corporations to consider alternative company structures. The failure of many strategic alliances, however, has clearly shown that understanding the development process of the alliance is critical for success. Christoph Bronder and Rudolf Pritzl present a structured procedure for developing strategic alliances that outlines four critical phases: strategic decision for an alliance, alliance configuration, partner selection, and alliance management.     

知识聚合调节作用下双元联盟对企业能力重构的影响研究

基于316家制造企业的调研数据,分析双元联盟(探索式联盟和利用式联盟)对企业能力重构的影响,并探索知识聚合对上述关系的调节作用。研究发现:探索式联盟对能力替代有倒U形作用,却负向影响能力进化;利用式联盟对能力替代有负向影响,却对能力进化有倒U形作用;知识耦合既增强了探索式联盟与企业能力重构的关系,也缓解了利用式联盟与企业能力重构的关系;知识内聚在缓解探索式联盟与企业能力重构关系的同时,也增强了利用式联盟与企业能力重构的关系。     

Managing Multiple Facets of Risk in New Product Alliances*

The trend of forming alliances to develop new products continues; however, many of these new product alliances fail. As such we explore how key risk types intrinsic in new product alliances, performance, relational, and knowledge appropriation risks, influence alliance success. Further, we theorize that different alliance governance mechanisms can reduce the negative impact of risks on alliance success. To disentangle possible heterogeneous factors across firms that may affect the interplay of risk assessments and the use of governance mechanisms, we employ latent class regression analysis on survey data collected from 128 new product alliance firms and find support for a two‐regime solution. Longer alliance relationships and lower technological turbulence are factors for some firms (regime one), while the opposite are factors for other firms (regime two). These two regimes show different patterns in the interplay of risk assessments and governance for alliance success. Our theory and results support viewing risk as a multiple‐factor concept and by understanding the different impacts of the risk types in new product alliances and how governance mechanisms mitigate such effects, we aid managers' decision making regarding the balance of contractual versus normative governance in new product alliances. Understanding the heterogeneous factors inherent in these complex relationships enables managers to understand the conditions in which various governance mechanisms promote new product alliance success.     

The Impact of Geographic Proximity on What to Buy,How to Buy,and Where to Buy: Evidence from High‐Tech Durable Goods Market*

Social contagion effects due to geographical proximity refer to the social effects wherein the behavior of an individual varies with the behavior of other individuals who are geographically close. Although the influence of such effects on consumer choices has been established in several contexts, much of the extant studies have focused on its effect on consumers’ decision of whether to buy a new product or adopt a new innovation. There has been no systematic examination of the influence of geographic proximity on other aspects of consumers’ product buying process such as what to buy (i.e., brand choice), how to buy (i.e., the channel), and where to buy (i.e., retailers). Such effects can matter significantly in high‐technology and durable goods markets and therefore, it is critical to understand the scope of these on consumers’ choice of retailers and channel as well. Drawing on literatures from word of mouth effects, ecommerce, and consumers’ perception of risk in their purchase process, we develop a set of hypotheses on the effect of geographic proximity on consumers’ choices of what to buy, how to buy, and where to buy. Leveraging a microlevel dataset of purchases of personal computers, we develop brand‐, retailer‐, and channel‐related measures of proximity effects at the individual consumer level and estimate a joint disaggregate model of the three choices that make up a product purchase process to test these hypotheses. Our results indicate a significant contagion effect on each of the three choices. Furthermore, we find evidence of a greater effect of geographic proximity on inexperienced consumers—those who are new to the product category. Our results thus help develop a holistic understanding of the influence of social contagion effects on consumers’ decision making.     

“名字”,还是“卖点”,消费者如何加工双重信息?

在营销实践中存在大量的仿洋和仿古品牌名称,因为品牌名称作为信息确实会影响消费者的认知和态度。基于信息加工的角度,本文探讨了消费者如何加工品牌名称等多重信息。通过实验研究发现品牌名称与产品功能诉求在互补型匹配时传播效果更好,而且其效果具有一般性。这一结果有助于在更抽象的信息加工层面理解仿洋和仿古品牌名称的应用效果,因而更好地调控消费者的反应。