How competitor brand names affect within-brand choices

Kunter Gunasti () and Berna Devezer ()
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Kunter Gunasti: University of Connecticut
Berna Devezer: University of Idaho

Marketing Letters, 2016, vol. 27, issue 4, No 9, 715-727

Abstract: Abstract This research shows that consumers’ intra-brand choices (e.g., Mercedes C330 vs. C340) can be affected by exposure to a competitor alphanumeric brand name that forms an incidental trend with the numbers in the focal brand names (e.g., BMW320i or BMW350i). We propose and test two mechanisms. First, when no attribute information is available, the competitor brand can make the numerical trends formed by brand names salient and meaningful, and increase the preference for higher brands (e.g., Mercedes C340). Second, when attribute values are negatively correlated with brands, exposure to the competitor brand name can trigger brand-attribute magnitude tradeoffs. In five experiments, we demonstrate that our predictions hold when there are no intrinsic brand-attribute associations, and even when the competitor brand is not available for choice. We identify competitive categorization as a boundary condition and demonstrate that the effect diminishes when consumers do not categorize the nonfocal option as a competitor.

Keywords: Alphanumeric brand names; Numerical cognition; Product attributes; Context effects; Competition; Competitive categorization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11002-015-9374-x

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