Brand Spillover as a Marketing Strategy
研究弱品牌企业是否应利用与强品牌企业共用合同制造商的关系进行品牌溢出营销，发现当弱品牌原始品牌力过低或制造商成本优势不显著时不应使用，但特定情况下三方均可能受益。
When a weak-brand firm and a strong-brand firm source from a common contract manufacturer, the weak-brand firm may advertise this relationship to promote its own product. This paper investigates whether the weak-brand firm should use such brand spillover as a marketing strategy and how this decision depends on the firms’ characteristics and market conditions. We develop a game theoretic model consisting of one contract manufacturer and two firms with asymmetric brand power. The contract manufacturer determines the wholesale prices for the two firms and then each firm decides whether to source from the contract manufacturer. If both firms outsource to the contract manufacturer, then the weak-brand firm may choose whether to promote its product through brand spillover. Although brand spillover improves the attractiveness of the weak-brand firm’s product at no cost, we find that the weak-brand firm should not use brand spillover if (1) its original brand power is sufficiently low or (2) the contract manufacturer does not have a significant cost advantage. Interestingly, the adoption of brand spillover by the weak-brand firm can benefit all three parties under certain circumstances. Nevertheless, when the contract manufacturer has a significant cost advantage, in equilibrium the strong-brand firm will be hurt by brand spillover and hence should take actions to prevent it. This paper was accepted by Dmitri Kuksov, marketing.