The Research of “Crossover” Marketing Strategy
Xiao-feng Ji1, Hai-na Shen1
1
Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, 310018
(shen494511067@163.com)
Abstract - The brand’s crossover strategy has become a
tendency of branding strategy when industries try to have a
better development at this moment. It is great importance
for us that how to indeed understand the crossover strategy,
and how to apply the crossover strategy as a marketing
approach as well as the significance of implementing
crossover strategy in enterprise. First, in this article we
elaborate the definition and forms of crossover strategy, and
the most importance point is that distinguish similarities and
differences between co-branding and crossover. Second, we
narrate four factors that affect the evaluation of crossover
products briefly, that is, customer-based brand equity, joint
matching, consumer’s involvement and consumer
innovativeness. Finally, this paper discusses the significance
of crossover to enterprises.
Keywords - Crossover, Consumer Innovativeness,
Consumer Involvement, Marketing Strategy
With the diversification of consumer demands, a
single brand has been insufficient interpretation about the
attitude toward life. The crossover strategy has become
another main branding strategy after branding extension
as a new marketing strategy，which proved to be a most
popular topic among entrepreneurs. As the “Crossover”
strategy comprehensive popularizing, whether garment
industry, IT industry, automobile manufacturing, food
industry or entertainment industry began applying the
“Crossover” marketing model to derive own brand
meaning and expand potential consumer groups, as well
as cooperate with another well-known brand to seek
market penetration and expansion in multi-field. In 1999,
when the Puma and fashion designer Jil Sander jointly
launch a series of upper-scale casual shoes, JochenZeitz,
the CEO of Puma, put forward the viewpoint of
"crossover". Since then, several products such as beer and
clothing, real estate and luxury, Coke and music, garment
and automobile that unrelated totally, they join together
and gain mutual benefit through the “crossover” strategy.
I.
A.
AN OVERVIEW OF CROSSOVER
The definition of Crossover
The original explanation of “Crossover” is a path
where something can be crossed to get from one side to
the other, but when it is introduced into Marketing
Science, researchers have different definitions about it.
This paper is support by The National Natural Science
Foundation of China. (Project Numbers: 70902047)
For example，by analysis an advertising case about
"Nike" and "Buick", Deng Yongbing (2007) termed
“Crossover” as a phenomenon that two brands from
different areas joint to illustrate the characteristics of
target consumers with multiple perspectives. Hu Shui
(2007) called “Crossover” that one uses the core elements
of its own brand to match the core elements of partner’s
brand as crossover marketing strategy. Jia Yi (2008)
considered “Crossover” dissemination is that brands or
products in diverse areas unite together in order to
attaining effective marketing spread and penetration. Du
Yongli (2008) thought that “Crossover” refer to the way
that two or more brand highly recognized by consumers
in different fields get together for commercial cooperation,
in which all those brand names involved in will be
retained. At the same time, the new brand or product
generated by crossover strategy is called crossover
product. Now, scholars have no uniform definition to
“Crossover”, but crossover must generate new brand or
product by uniting with two brands in different areas. And
in this regard, the viewpoints of all researchers are
absolutely consistent.
B.
The form of Crossover
At present, there is no standard classification about
crossover strategy, but numerous scholars have divided
crossover into all kinds of forms from different
perspectives. From the approaches to cooperation, Yang
Pan (2009) divided crossover into three forms, namely,
product crossover strategy, commodity circulation
channel crossover strategy and marketing crossover
strategy [1]. In detail, product crossover strategy means the
alliance occur among different product categories, thereby
it can create a new selling point for company. Such as in
2003, the Puma and the BMW Mini cooperated to launch
a black driver shoe ----Mini Motion 2 part shoe.
Commodity circulation channel crossover strategy means
the cooperation based on sharing commodity circulation
channel between partners. Like Skyworth invited Huadi
Group to participate in the activity as “Rural Theater
Project" in 2006. With the help of cultural transmission,
two establishments sell sets of home appliances and
kitchen products into rural consumers and open the rural
marketing successfully. Marketing crossover strategy is a
branding marketing that combined with different products
or brands in the industry, and which bring different user
experience to consumers. For example, Hermes selects 46
silk scarves as a “tool” and merged with the artist Hilton
McConnico’s art works, which present a royal Hermes
scarves art exhibition named “The Tale of Silk ". Zhiming
Zhu divided crossover strategy into horizontal crossover
strategy, longitudinal crossover strategy and intersected
crossover strategy when study the crossover cases in
wines. Horizontal crossover strategy is that different
industries complement each other's advantages for
consistent target and create a competitive advantage.
Longitudinal crossover strategy mean that the
manufacturers and merchants connect together to achieve
benefit-sharing by investing market, developing
commodity circulation channel and servicing consumers
corporately. Then intersected crossover strategy means
that enterprises. retailer and consumers link together for
sharing their interests and values. In a book of
"Crossover", the author subdivided crossover strategy to
product crossover, service crossover, technical crossover,
design crossover, regional crossover, emotional crossover,
brand crossover, sales crossover, channel crossover and
communication crossover based on diversified
cooperative field.
C.
The similarities and differences of Crossover and
Co-branding
The concept of co-branding was put forward by
Boone in 1980, and related studies have been studied
maturely. We adopt the terminology used by Simonin and
Ruth (1998), which involve a short-term or long-term
association or combination among two or more individual
brands, products, and/or other distinctive proprietary
assets [2]. These brands or products can be represented
physically (e.g., bundled package among two or more
brands) or symbolically (e.g., an advertisement) by the
association of brand names, logos, or other proprietary
assets of the brand. There are many similarities between
co-branding and crossover in their definitions. The
common is that their participants are multiple brands, but
crossover strategy pays more attention to cooperation in
different fields. These different fields can be considered
as various industries or target consumer groups. The aim
of crossover strategy lays emphasis on expanding its
brand to other areas.
According to diverse product categories that partner
brands participated in co-branding, Fang and Mishra
divided co-branding into similar brand alliances and
heterogeneous brand alliances. From this classification
approach, crossover is similar to the heterogeneous brand
alliance. Blackett and Boad (1999) classified co-branding
into contact / cognitive brand alliance, value recognized
brand alliance, elemental composition brand alliance and
ability
complementary
brand
alliance[3].
This
classification based on creating common value ranging
from low to high was accepted universally. Due to
crossover partner brands from different industries, it is
difficult to in-depth make use of their resources in two
enterprises, so the majority of crossover strategy cases
integrate partner’s brand concept and enterprise culture
into own brand through joint advertisement between
partner companies. This style is belonged to low common
value creation. Therefore, in the strict sense, crossover
strategy is part of co-branding, or a special form of
co-branding. The success of applying crossover strategy
depends on the consumer's acceptance with new things,
so crossover always take place in fashion industry with
high fashion involvement and luxury products with high
added-value.
II. FACTORS AFFECTING CONSUMER
EVALUATION TO CROSSOVER PRODUCTS
In the study about co-branding evaluation factors,
Simonin and Ruth’s brand alliance evaluation model is
the most classic assessment model. In this model, by
analysis the brand alliance of automobile and computer
chip, this experiment confirmed that the partner brands’
previously attitude, brand fit and product fit were the
main factors influencing consumer evaluation and brand
familiarity was the conditioning factors. Other scholars
expanded and perfected S&R evaluation model’s factors.
In this paper, we have proved crossover strategy is
belonged to co-branding, so the S&R evaluation model is
also the fundament of crossover strategy evaluation
research. But the crossover strategy has its unique
features and we will elaborate it in this article.
A.
Customer-based Brand Equity
Customer-based brand equity is defined as the
differential effect of brand knowledge on customer
response to the marketing of the brand [4]. That is,
customer-based brand equity involves customer’s
reactions to an element of the marketing mix for the brand
in comparison with their reaction to the same marketing
mix element attributed to a fictitiously named or unnamed
version of product or service. It reveals how consumers
understand the connotation of the brand. Most of the
current studies measure brand alliance evaluation from
single dimension of perceived quality, brand awareness or
brand attitude, lacking of comprehensive and science.
Brand equity has multiple dimensions including brand
awareness, associations, loyalty and quality perception.
Compared with the previously attitude of partner brands
in S&R model, brand equity exposits customer's view to
partner brands comprehensively, therefore, it is more
reasonable
to
evaluate
brand
alliance
from
customer-based brand equity brand equity.
According to the stimulus generalization theory
based on Affect Transfer Model, when partner brand with
high brand equity have established positive conditioned
reflex as the initial stimulus, another brand with low
brand equity appearing as a secondary stimulus still can
generate positive conditioned reflex as the same as
previously high brand equity brand. Judith H. Washburn,
(2004), carried out an experiments combining two brands
with high brand equity and low brand equity, and founded
that brand with low brand equity can improve own
evaluation significantly by jointing with brand of high
brand equity [5]. Ali Besharat (2010) studied brand
alliance benefit by comparing consumer attitudes, quality
perception and purchase intention of new product in
co-branding, and found that if want to significantly affect
the consumers’ evaluation to brand alliance, we need at
least a high brand equity brand[6]. The steady high product
quality and good reputation of high brand equity brand
provides credit guarantees and quality assurance, so
customer-based brand equity has a positive correlation
with and crossover strategy evaluation.
B.
The relationship of partner brands in Crossover
It is not any two brands have the ability to success in
crossover. Crossover strategy must in appropriate
conditions. We defined joint matching as suitability in
logical between two brands. Joint matching affect
crossover strategy by two dimensions of product fit
(product level) and brand fit (brand level).
Consumers' perception of "product fit," or the
extent to which consumers perceive the two product
categories to be compatible, is expected to play a
significant role in how consumers respond to the
crossover strategy. Aaker and Keller (1990) from three
dimensions to measure the product fit, namely, the
complementarity, substitutability and transferability of
products before crossover [7]. The complementary refers
to the product of cooperation brand can be combined use.
The substitutability refers to cooperation brand products
can interchange with each other. Transferability refers to
the cooperation brand products have ability to support
each other in technology. Wu Fang and Lu Juan (2010)
simulate crossover strategy by the experiment about milk
with cereal and milk with computer, proved that the joint
matching has two dimensions, in addition, the influence
of product fit is greater than brand fit in crossover
strategy [8].
Brand fit mainly means the matching extent in brand
image and reputation about the cooperative brand.
Simonin (1998) joined the concept of brand fit into the
brand alliance evaluation model for the first time. Brand
fit have four aspects including brand image, brand
association, brand personality and brand reputation. From
the product level, Park (1996) thought the cooperative
brand wanted to transmit their information as much as
possible must have good fit between each other [9]. In his
research, the well-known leading brand combined with
well-known but low match modified brand and unknown
but high match modified brand. It proved that brand fit
has a positive correlation with and crossover strategy
evaluation.
C.
Consumer Involvement
From social judgment theory original, Rothschild
(1984) defined that involvement is unobservable
motivation, excitement or interested state caused by a
particular thing or a special condition [10]. In short,
consumer involvement is the extent of consumer paying
attention to products. In high involvement situation,
consumers will think highly of searching for main
information positively and specifically. By multiple
screening and information processing, consumers will
refute the information different with own faith. While in
the low involvement situation, the information be
searched is limited, and consumers do not want to spend
more effort to seek enough information, so consumers
tend to passively accept the information that is
inconsistent with their ideas.
Hellyer’s (1995) study about how to select high
matching or high brand equity brands as partner, found
that the main criteria is the consumer involvement [11].
When an unknown brand joins with a well-known brand,
in low involvement situation, consumers will weaken the
perception of brand fit, making it easier to accepting the
unknown brand. While in the high involvement situation,
consumers will realize the low-matching of unknown
brand and well-known brands, thereby paying more
concern about the negative effects bringing by unknown
brand. Suzanne B. Walchli (2007) considering consumer
involvement as adjustment variables, research the
relationship between brands fit and brand alliance
evaluation in different involvement conditions [12]. In this
experiment, he discovered that in the case of low
involvement, the relationship presented a linear
decreasing, but in the case of high involvement, the brand
with medium matching has a higher evaluation. So
consumer involvement will influence the evaluation of
crossover strategy.
D.
Consumer Innovativeness
Innovativeness is the extent of a person to try new
things. In the spread theory, the classification of
consumers mainly to the five types: innovators, early
adopters, earlt majority, later majority and the laggards [13].
An innovator is the disseminator of opinions. When
innovative consumer show great interest to a product and
encourage others to try it, the product is more easily
accepted by public. Crossover strategy is a new concept
to consumers. There
must be instinctive sense of fear
to new things, presenting not dare to try or purchase. A
survey covering 2.62 million consumers in 12 cities
shows that there are 48 percent of people prefer to try new
things and pursue fashion in the potential consumer
groups of crossover products. According to the
characteristics of innovative consumers, we can know that
innovative consumers will show greater interest to
crossover product. Due to natural sense of pursing novelty,
innovative consumers are more willing to purchase
crossover products. Therefore, consumer’s innovativeness
is an internal factor to crossover strategy evaluation.
III.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CROSSOVER
Crossover strategy makes additional value. Every
excellent brand can accurately reflect one characteristics
of the target consumer. But it often influence by external
factors especially suffering with similar competitive
brand. Crossover strategy makes a breakthrough in the
existing industry trade, through taking advantage of other
industries’ value. In brief, crossover strategy unites brands
or enterprises with similar or complementary character,
sharing part of the consumer group and achieving greater
benefit.
Crossover strategy expands brand market and
reduces business risk. Many companies have a large
market share in their field and need to develop new
market. But companies must invest a lot of money to
open up the new markets following tremendous risk.
Crossover strategy provides good solution to this problem.
By cooperation in different fields, partner brand’s
reputation and experience in this area is an intangible
asset that can help enterprise establish their brand image
and consumer groups faster in new areas. Partner brand’s
reputation is the foundation of the development of own
brand.
IV. CONCLUTION
As marketing expert Elliott Ettenberg said in his
book "4R Marketing”: Co-Marketing will become the
major trend of the economic times [14]. With the
emergence of crossover car, crossover dress and crossover
art, I believe that the crossover strategy is bound to the
major branding strategy in the future. According to actual
situation, enterprises have to choose the complementary
partner brand, getting the utmost out of partner’s brand
equity to promote own fames. Enterprises also need to be
subdivided target consumer groups, and make full use of
advertisement, avoiding waste of resources in the
promotional stage.
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