Abstract:

Nowadays，many weak brands have acquired strong international brands to accelerate their internationalization. However, “the weakers acquire the strongers” model of M&A leads to many consumers’ loss. Thus, this paper through two experiments to explore the relationships between the brand strategy after the M&A, brand authenticity and consumer purchase intention. The results show that the decline of consumer purchase intention was mainly caused by the falling consumer assesses on brand authenticity, the different post-merger brand strategies have significant difference on brand authenticity and consumer purchase intention, and self-brand connection played a moderate role between brand authenticity and consumer purchase intention.

Key words: Merger and Acquisition, Brand Strategy, Brand Authenticity, Purchase Intention, Self-brand Connection