The relative effectiveness of conditioning one or two attributes to a brand

Attribute conditioning refers to the phenomenon that target stimuli acquire specific attributes by pairing them with stimuli possessing these attributes. We apply attribute conditioning to a marketing context where brands are often displayed with stimuli possessing semantic attributes to establish brand-attribute associations. In particular, we examine whether it is more effective from a brand image perspective to associate a brand with only one attribute, two related attributes, or two unrelated attributes. Across four experimental studies, we find that pairing a single attribute (e.g., athletic) with a brand is most effective for building brand–attribute associations and that pairing multiple, related attributes (athletic and healthy) is more effective than pairing multiple, unrelated attributes (athletic and smart). Supplementing this finding, an analysis of observational data from real brands suggests that attributing two orthogonal attributes to a brand is associated with negative effects on marketing-relevant outcomes. Our findings extend previous research on multiattribute conditioning and highlight the importance of the number and relationship between attributes for building effective brand associations.