民族品牌跨国并购后的动态品牌战略

The Research on Post-acquisition Brand Strategies of Chinese Local Brands' Cross-border M&A——A Dynamic Perspective

自2009年金融危机和2011年欧债危机爆发以来,民族品牌大举并购国外强势品牌,但"蛇吞象"式的跨国并购背后却是消费者的认知失调及其动态变化。以往研究较少涉及解决此认知失调的动态品牌战略研究。因而,本文从"弱并强"后的动态视角出发,围绕如何长期有效减轻该认知失调,引入认知一致性和CBBE理论,运用动态实验和线性混合模型等方法深入剖析并购后动态品牌战略。有趣的发现是:随着时间的推移,虽然并后品牌的名称变化(品牌要素战略)和价格变化(营销支持战略)一起减少该认知失调的作用会随时间增强,但相对于其名称变化,价格变化更能减少该认知失调。这些成果既丰富了现有品牌战略管理理论,又为民族品牌国际化提供了重要的战略指导。

Since 2009 Financial Crsis and 2011 Euro-Debt Criss, Chinese Local Brands（CLB） have acquired many foreign famous and strong brands to accelerate their internationalization. However, ＂the weakers acquire the strongers＂ of cross-border M＆A （Merges and Acquistions） leads to consumers＇ cognitive dissonance （CCD） with time. The extant research concerned is silent on the the cross-border M＆A of the weaker brands on stronger ones, and let dynamic research alone. Thus, based on congitive sonnace and customer-based brand equtity （CBBE） theories, this study, from a dynamic view of ＂the weakers acquiring the strongers＂, finds the way how to attenuate the dynamic CCD. Consequently, it uses focus group, in-depth personal on brand strategies to mitigate CCD. The interesting and important interviews, experiments and LME to shed light findings are drawn that brand identity strategy and brand identity strategy increase the joint variance explanation of brand fit, i. e. , cognitive consistence. Additionally, while the impact of marketing support program （ brand price change） on brand fit （ brand cognitive con- sisitence） increases, the impact of brand identity strategy on brand fit （cognitive consisitence） decreases over time. In other words, although the mitigating effect of brand identity strategy （ brand name change） and marketing support program （brand price change ） on CCD increases overtime, marketing support program （brand price change）, compared to brand identity strategy （brand name change）, makes more mitigating effect on CCD. The conclusions enrich the theories on cross-border brand strategy and CLB internationaliztion and offer vital implications for the prevalent cross-border M＆A of CLB at present. Above all, this study has following theoretical contribution： at first, it enriches extant post-acquisition brand strategy research. Most important, this study takes a dynamic view on the influence factors, such as brand identity strategy （brand name change ） and marketing support program （brand price change ）, of post-acquisition CCD based on the weaker-acquiring stronger brand M＆A. As mentioned above, both of brand identity strategy and mar- keting support program have positive and important effects on brand fit （brand cognitive consistence）. However, the most important in the conclusions of this study is： the effects of those influent factors are also changing when time is going. As we acknowledge, there is little research on the dynamic post-acquisition brand strategies to mitigate post-acquisition CCD through influencing brand fit （brand cognitive consistence）. This study shows a deep understanding of how to dynamically （in the long run） mitigate post-acquisition CCD and give brand managers some valuable practical implications and managerial instructions on post-acquisition CCD management. At second, most researches always used cross-section data to analyze post-acquisition brand management while this study collected longitudinal data, which mean more generalizability and rigorousness. To the marketing implication, this study also has eager to go abroad to a larger and international market important values. As we know, CLB are rapidly growing and with the help of cross-border M＆A. However, brand acquisitions of ＂the weakers acquiring the strongers＂ give rise to post-acquisition CCD and, eventually the loss of post-acquisition brand equity. The implications from this study show that the symbolic factor, like brand identitiy （e. g. band name）, takes a more postive effect on post-acquisition brand equity in the earlier phase while the benificial factor, like marketing support program （e. g. brand price） does in the later phase. As to future research and limitation, firstly, the experiment stimuli of this study are based on real brands with highly external validity. Nevertheless, its internal validity is low. Secondly, this study only focused on CLB acquiring stronger brands overseas and needs to be improved to other data, like the M＆A of Indian Local Brands, leading to a higher generalizability. Finally, the two post-acquisition brand strategies （brand identity and marketing support program） in this study are only limited to brand name and price changes. Based on tomer-Based Brand Equity） model, further researches should pay attention to logo, slogan Keller＇s CBBE （ Cus- , and more in brand identity strategy, channel or promotion in marketing support programs, and spokesman, event or so on in associate leveraging secondary associations.