Brand alliances, or partnerships between established brands, is a viable branding strategy. Yet, it is an inherently risky strategy, especially when one of the brand partners faces a crisis. A direct fallout of brand alliance crisis concerns consumer attitude spill over. Despite the surge in brand alliance research and industry interest, the literature on the psychological mechanisms and outcomes of spill over effects remains sparse. Underpinned by the Balance theory from social psychology, this research examines the impact of crises on consumers’ evaluations of corporate brand alliances. Employing an experimental design across three crisis contexts – preventable, accidental and victim, the research shows that crises in brand alliances negatively impact consumers’ evaluations of the culpable brand which spills over to the co-branded product. The non-culpable partner, however, is not found to be negatively affected. The results also show that post-crisis attitudes can be enhanced if consumers are exposed to recovery information that diminishes the culpable brand’s role in the crisis. The research provides novel contributions to knowledge and offers managerial guidelines on effective post-crisis public relations communication.

品牌联盟或知名品牌之间的合作伙伴关系是一种可行的品牌战略。然而，这本质上是一种有风险的策略，尤其是当其中一个品牌合作伙伴面临危机时。品牌联盟危机的直接后果是消费者态度的溢出。尽管品牌联盟研究和行业兴趣激增，但关于溢出效应的心理机制和结果的文献仍然很少。本研究以社会心理学平衡理论为基础，探讨危机对消费者对企业品牌联盟评价的影响。该研究采用了针对三种危机背景（可预防的、意外的和受害者的）的实验设计，表明品牌联盟中的危机会对消费者对有罪品牌的评价产生负面影响，这种影响会蔓延到联合品牌产品上。然而，无罪的伴侣并未受到负面影响。研究结果还表明，如果消费者了解恢复信息，削弱有罪品牌在危机中的作用，危机后的态度就会得到改善。该研究对知识做出了新颖的贡献，并为危机后有效的公共关系沟通提供了管理指南。