【Abstract】Co-branding is an effective marketing strategy that is widely used by brands to expand the market, but research on the influence of consumer-level factors is limited, with predominant emphasis on brand-level factors that predict acceptance of brands that are seemingly “different” from each other co-branding with one another. This research explores the effect of perceived economic mobility on perceived co-branding fit. Findings from Experiment 1 indicate that co-brands low or moderate (vs. high) fit with one another are perceived more favorably when perceived economic mobility is higher. Experiment 2 further examines the proposed mechanism that we propose to be holistic thinking style behind the influence of perceived economic mobility on distant co-branding evaluation, and it also rules out two alternative explanations. Experiment 3 replicates above findings with an American dataset. Our findings contribute to the co-branding literature by proposing a novel antecedent—perceived economic mobility—of low-fit co-branding. Our findings also provide managerial guidelines for enhancing co-branding effectiveness.