The Effect of Co-Branding on the Fashion Luxury Consumer’s Brand Equity : Comparison between the Generations Y and X.

Abstract: The co-branding strategies are gaining attention from research due to the special difficulties of implementing a collaborative strategy. Hence, this paper evaluates the effect of the co-branding strategy between a luxury brand and a high-street retailer on the luxury consumers’ brand equity of the luxury brand post-co-branding. Additionally, this study aims to find differences between the generation Y and X cohorts in terms of brand equity impact from co-branding. This effect was evaluated from three brand equity dimensions: perceived quality, brand image and brand loyalty. To conduct this research the data was collected at the department store Harvey Nichols in London where luxury fashion brands are sold. Later the data was analyzed with a regression, analysis and t-test. The consumers showed differences in terms of their attitude towards the co-branding strategies between a luxury fashion brand and a high-street retailer. In addition, this research found that all the brand equity dimensions suffer a direct influence from the attitude towards co-branding for all the consumers in the study. Direct influence means that the co-branding strategies may cause positive or negative spillover effects. Moreover, the results conclude that there is only a difference in the brand equity dimension of brand loyalty between the generation cohorts Y and X.