Abstract: To rapidly grow and gain consumers' attention in the manner of trans-boundary union has become a new trend in the marketing practice of local brands. The previous researches have focused on the use of scarcity heuristics of single brand to enhance the persuasion effect of product advertisements; however, there is a lack of sufficient explorations on how advertising appeals of trans-boundary union affecting consumers' brand attitudes. From the perspective of perceived coolness, this paper conducts three experiments to investigate the mechanisms by which the advertising appeals of trans-boundary union affect brand attitudes. The results show that the distinctive advertising appeals can better prompt consumers' brand attitudes than the limited-opportunity advertising appeals. The perceived coolness is playing a mediating role between the advertising appeal of trans-boundary union and brand attitude. The brand complementarity and the comparison focus are the boundary conditions for the existence of the mediating effect of perceived coolness, that is, the mediating effect only exists when both parties in the cooperation are low property complementary or the consumers focus on the differences between the brands. The conclusions of this study have enriched the relative researches on the advertising persuasion in brand cross-over marketing context and have important management enlightenment for the trans-boundary marketing practice of local brands.

Key words: trans-boundary union, advertising appeal, perceived coolness, brand complementary, comparison focus