Branding Access Offers: The Importance of Product Brands, Ownership Status, and Spillover Effects to Parent Brands

Abstract

Introducing access as an alternative consumption mode next to ownership constitutes a major business model innovation. Managers need to better understand how to brand these new access offers and how this innovation affects current customers of the parent brand. In a series of experiments, we show that the product brand affects consumers’ access attitude less strongly than the offer’s service convenience in the carsharing context. However, in the fashion context, we find that brand prestige becomes essential for consumers’ access attitude. Regardless of the context, we repeatedly find that owners of a prestige brand evaluate new access offers more favorably than non-owners. In the carsharing context, this effect reverses for value brand owners. Furthermore, we do not find evidence that the access offer affects the parent brand negatively. Instead, we find that the parent brand is considered more innovative when a new access offer is introduced.