The Impact of Ingredient Brand Awareness on Host Brand Attitude: The Moderating Role of Regulatory Focus

Abstract

Companies are attempting to increase their competitiveness using a number of strategies. The brand alliance strategy, which is one of the most commonly employed methods, has a favorable impact on the company's market share due to the strong recognition of a well-known brand in the early stage of market entrance. The main purpose of this study is to examine the effect of ingredient brand awareness on the consumers’ evaluation of host brands. With the purpose of it, the study examined the changes of attitudes toward the host brands by ingredient’s brand awareness (high/low).We also tested the moderating roles of consumers’ regulatory focus (promotion/prevention focus) on the relationship between ingredient brand awareness and host brands attitude. The results of this study are summarized as follow. First, consumers tend to be more favorable toward host brand products when brand awareness was higher than lower. Second, the effect of consumers’ regulatory focus (promotion focus/prevention focus) was found to be positive and significant effect between ingredient brand awareness and host brand attitude. Based on the findings, the theoretical and managerial implication are discussed.

Keywords:Ingredient Brand Awareness, Psychological Distance Cue, Consumer Regulatory Focus, Brand Attitude, South Korea.

DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/13-20-04

Publication date:October 31^st 2021