Shared Brand Equity

Many brand collaboration platforms—such as sponsorship, celebrity endorsement, influencer marketing, product placement, cobranding, and human branding—build strong relationships between brands and contribute to the brand equity of two or more brands. Brand equity, since inception, has been concerned with the value of a brand, how this value is built and measured, and how the marketplace responds to it. Based on previous work and in response to current marketing practices, the authors suggest that the concept of shared brand equity, where collaborative efforts result in connectivity between brands, is needed to better explain and guide advertising and marketing communications research and practice. Drawing on developments in cognitive psychology, we explain how shared brand equity is developed and how it persists, the role it plays in semantic/associative neighborhoods, and how it explains research findings. We offer a set of research propositions, as well as concrete examples of the usefulness of the theoretical approach.