Branding dates back to centuries ago when traders were trying to distinguish their products from others in order to promise a higher quality to their consumers. Today, brands are considered as intangible resources that can have a significant contribution to the firm performance. Based on the Resource-Based Theory (RBT), valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable brands are strategic resources that create superior value and play a key role in achieving a sustainable competitive advantage over rivals. In the process of developing and maintaining strong brands, brand managers constantly need to make multiple decisions. Whether to add, delete or retail brands are among the routine decisions that brand managers face in managing their brand portfolios. Brand managers need to regularly assess their brand portfolios in order to make sure they are not selling redundant brands. Through brand portfolio assessment, brand managers can recognize weak brands and delete the unprofitable brands from the portfolio in order to free up resources and reinvest them in their stronger and more successful brands to gain competitive advantage in the market. This admonition is in line with the RBT of competitive advantage. This dissertation builds upon and extends previous literature on RBT in the context of brand deletion to achieve three main objectives. The first objective is to find the answer to why companies decide to delete brands from their portfolios. Thus, the focus of the first objective is to identify the organizational (i.e., firm, managerial, and brand) factors that drive the brand deletion strategy in a company. The second goal is to find the answer to the when question through identifying the environmental (i.e., market) factors associated with brand deletion decision making in a company. Finally, the third objective is to go deeper and investigate the different types of brand deletion strategy (i.e., merge, sell, milk, and kill). In other words, the third objective seeks to find the answer to the how question. Deleting brands from the portfolio of a company, being the most sensitive issue in strategic brand portfolio management, is yet understudied in the brand portfolio management literature. This study adds to the literature of strategic brand portfolio management by a) applying the Resource-based Theory (RBT) in the context of brand deletion decision making and b) empirically testing the relationships among the drivers of brand deletion strategies. The findings of this dissertation provide a better understanding on how each of these factors are associated with the brand deletion decision making process in companies. The current dissertation provides practitioners with several managerial insights as well. First, the study identifies and empirically tests several organizational-level factors that drive brand deletion decisions in companies. This will help brand managers be familiar with factors that they need to consider when evaluating their poor-performing brands. Breaking these factors into internal (brand and firm) and external (market) drivers provides practitioners with a better understanding of the brand deletion decision making process. In addition, the findings of this study help managers realize their own role (in terms of their attitude toward deletion and their commitment to the brand) in the brand deletion process. Finally, the identification and discussion of the four types of brand deletion strategy help companies have a clearer picture of how they can remove brands from their portfolios.

This three-essay thesis focuses on how value of the brand, i.e. brand equity is created, with each study investigating different parts of the relationships within the brand value chain. My first essay identifies and tests a new set of brand equity drivers such as brand structure and positioning, brand strategy, and customer characteristics. I use revenue premium as the retail level measure of brand equity and decompose it into price and volume premiums. Then, I explore the effects of different brand equity drivers on these premiums. The study on the universe of grocery industry in the U.S. shows compelling evidences that volume premium prevails over price premium in driving revenue premium. Brand structure and positioning, brand strategy and customer characteristics contribute significantly to the changes of the brand market performance measured with price, volume and revenue premiums. My second essay examines the association between consumer-based brand equity (IBBE) and brand market performance, and the moderators of this association. I explore a comprehensive set of market performance measures (penetration, loyalty, market share, price and revenue) of 216 major brands sold in the grocery channel in the U.S., in conjunction with EquiTrend© brand equity measure. The results show that customer based brand equity provides incremental explanatory power for brand market performance beyond the explanation by a wide array of performance determinants identified in the first essay. Furthermore, the equity-performance association is moderated by a set of product and category features, as well as the firm brand strategy. My third essay studies whether firms benefit from having multiple brands across different areas. I model brand market performance as a function of different elements of the firm brand portfolio, including the size and performance of sibling brands and the inter-brand distance. The dataset includes 1,700 brands from over 350 firms in the grocery channel within the U.S. The results show that the brand portfolio information provides incremental explanatory power for brand market performance. Moreover, the size and the performance of sibling brands have significant impact on a focal brand's market performance, and these impacts are moderated by the inter-brand distance.

<p>During the past two decades research has shown that brands are among a company’s most valuable assets. However, in today’s competitive landscape, it is not enough to just create strong brands. The focus lies rather in managing a range of brand lever-age strategies within complex brand portfolios. Moreover, the majority of today’s established brand concepts do not represent the reality of contemporary brand man-agement. Instead, they tend to be based on dichotomies and simplifications. In addi-tion, there is a lack of criticism towards many of the established brand concepts resulting in the reduction of brand management to a number of static categories and stagnated definitions – thereby missing out on the analysis of important intersec-tional issues between the various categories. This book explores the somewhat for-gotten area of intersection, investigating the territory in-between brands.</p><p>The methods used consist of a literature review covering some of the most influ-ential brand models within the area of brand portfolio and brand leverage as well as an empirical case study including the following seven brands: Adidas, Bang & Oluf-sen, Electrolux, H&M, Microsoft, Peak Performance and W. L. Gore & Associates.</p><p>The findings show that conventional brand management models and terminology do not fully explain common marketplace strategies and practice. As a result, this research introduces a more realistic viewpoint and dynamic framework that is based on convergence and that allows migration and iteration rather than today’s static approach. The framework, named the brand leverage palette, introduces various nuances between different leverage strategies, both adding clarity and offering guid-ance by explaining different migration movements among today’s brand portfolios.</p>

During the past two decades research has shown that brands are among a company’s most valuable assets. However, in today’s competitive landscape, it is not enough to just create strong brands. The focus lies rather in managing a range of brand lever-age strategies within complex brand portfolios. Moreover, the majority of today’s established brand concepts do not represent the reality of contemporary brand man-agement. Instead, they tend to be based on dichotomies and simplifications. In addi-tion, there is a lack of criticism towards many of the established brand concepts resulting in the reduction of brand management to a number of static categories and stagnated definitions – thereby missing out on the analysis of important intersec-tional issues between the various categories. This book explores the somewhat for-gotten area of intersection, investigating the territory in-between brands. The methods used consist of a literature review covering some of the most influ-ential brand models within the area of brand portfolio and brand leverage as well as an empirical case study including the following seven brands: Adidas, Bang &amp; Oluf-sen, Electrolux, H&amp;M, Microsoft, Peak Performance and W. L. Gore &amp; Associates. The findings show that conventional brand management models and terminology do not fully explain common marketplace strategies and practice. As a result, this research introduces a more realistic viewpoint and dynamic framework that is based on convergence and that allows migration and iteration rather than today’s static approach. The framework, named the brand leverage palette, introduces various nuances between different leverage strategies, both adding clarity and offering guid-ance by explaining different migration movements among today’s brand portfolios.