Brand Equity in Cooperative Business Relationships: Exploring the Development of a Conceptual Model

Abstract

With the increase in inter-firm activities - whether joint promotion, cobranding, joint ventures, alliances, or other types of organizational cooperation - an individual firm stands to become more dependent on consumers' associations with its cooperative partners. Since cooperation involves association and sharing of both tangible and intangible assets, the focus shifts to how to jointly manage the individual firm's assets and equity and also the assets and equity of close affiliates. We develop a conceptual model that examines how and why a cooperative partner's relational assets and equity may transfer to the firm. First we examine the theoretical foundations and then we focus on the key relational constructs of trust and reputation, which are integrated into the model.