Background: In the 1970’s, the first concerns regarding manufacturing pollu-tion headed off in Sweden and an enormous demand was cre-ated. The result came to be an enhanced consumption of ingredi-ent branded products such as KRAV, Bra Miljöval and The Swan to mention a few. Fair Trade entered the Swedish shelves in 1996 which gave the consumers the possibility to buy products and contribute to better conditions for farmers and employees in de-veloping countries. Problem: In 1995 a research was performed, which showed that 50 percent of the respondents did not buy products with for instance an en-vironmental concerned label due to the significantly higher price. Some argue against this and believe that it is more of a marketing issue. Customers have become more aware in their shopping and, in order to keep them, companies must meet their demands by paying more attention to how they run their business. Purpose: The aim with this thesis is to investigate why managers make decisions to purchase ingredient branded products, particulary Fair Trade. Method: To accomplish this thesis a qualitative approach has been applied with the intention to describe the result from performed tele-phone and personal interviews with companies within chain res-taurants, hotels, grocery stores, and textile retail stores. Conclusion: The study demonstrated that the decision to introduce Fair Trade labelled products depended on factors such as; the introduction year of these products, the history of the company and core values. Managers at the selected companies decided to purchase products with the ingredient brand Fair Trade for different rea-sons. Either since they had a long history of concern for fair production and rooted values or due to that the introduction of these products contributed to a good business image or to clean the company’s history.

In a competitive environment, ensuring to provide high quality can be considered as one of the key objectives of the organizations. For guaranteeing that, the firms should communicate efficiently regarding quality, in order to influence the consumers´ perception towards quality. A high perception of quality requires a strong brand, which should guide the consumers in their choice and let them to refuse the competitors. Among the different strategies that can be put in place by the firms, co-branding is a joint strategy that is trying to combine the value of both brands in a synergy effect. Ingredient branding is a type of branding that entails the use of a component from one brand in a product of another brand, moreover these stimuli that are influencing the consumers´ behaviour. This stimulus will impact the quality perception of the brand and the consumers´ willingness of choosing the brand, therefore the brand would be preferred to other brands and make the consumer be loyal to the host brand. This study was conducted by employing a quantitative approach based on an experimental design with a focus on the automotive industry. A survey was distributed among students and young professionals, which are considered as actual or prospective car buyers. A total of 116 responses contributed to the sample of this research. The findings show that an ingredient brand with high perceived quality can increase the perceived quality of the host brand and that the increased quality of the host brand can lead to brand loyalty.

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<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.

As organisations try to emerge from the recent economic downturn, they attempt to enter different markets to decrease their dependency on their core market. Due to high costs in R&amp;D and the risk of failure, organisations try to sell the core components of their products to business partners who can incorporate these components into their own offering. Using a qualitative research method, we studied the case of TACHI as a player in the construction equipment industry. The purpose of the research was to find factors for maintaining successful business partnerships within this industry and also the role of co- branding in these business partnerships. After analysing the results of our study and reflecting on the theoretical framework, we concluded that operational compatibility, and commitment and trust were considered as the key factors that were most important in making business partnerships work successfully. Interestingly, players in the construction equipment industry do not consider co-branding as a strategy for entering new markets. However, we discovered a new phenomenon, which is informal branding, and we recommend this as a topic for future research.

品牌聯盟是市場上經常被運用的行銷策略，廠商藉由搭配另一個品牌共同推出產品，不僅增加原本產品的屬性，更讓消費者對於新產品產生更高的信心與正面的態度。消費者在對品牌聯盟產品形成態度的同時，也對原本單獨兩品牌產生了新的評價，使得消費者在品牌聯盟前後對於個別品牌的態度出現差異，造成品牌聯盟的外溢效果。本研究之目的在探討品牌聯盟類型中的組成份共品牌，是否會因為不同品牌知名度的組合，而影響消費者對品牌聯盟的態度。另外當品牌參與聯盟之後，消費者對品牌態度的改變，是否受其本身知名度以及在聯盟中擔任角色的影響。本研究設計一個2（主品牌知名度高/低）x2（成分品牌知名度高/低）x2（品牌聯盟成功/失敗）=8組的實驗，利用問卷瞭解消費者在各種組合下對品牌聯盟以及個別品牌的態度，再利用統計分析比較彼此的差異。 透過對214份有效問卷的分析，研究發現品牌知名度確實是影響消費者對品牌聯盟態度的因素。此外，消費者在品牌聯盟之後對個別品牌態度的變化幅度，會受品牌聯盟市場反應的好壞，品牌本身知名度，以及此品牌在聯盟中擔任角色的交互影響，而造成外溢效果的差異。品牌聯盟市場反應好壞不必然同時影響消費者對聯盟中兩個品牌的態度，消費者傾向於將品牌聯盟的成敗歸因於主品牌上，使主品牌的外溢效果大於成分品牌。另外品牌外溢效果同時會受品牌知名度與聯盟中主附品牌角色不同的影響。低知名度加上主品牌的組合最容易產生顯著的外溢效果。 / Brand alliance, also called co-branding, is a useful marketing strategy which helps an existing brand to leverage associations, strengthen its image and influence consumers’ attitudes by linking itself to other brands. A special case of brand association is ingredient branding, which highlights a product’s ingredient brand in order to signal the quality of co-branded products. While consumers perceive a co-brand and form attitudes to it, the attitudes toward each constituent brand are also influenced, causing the spillover effect. This study tries to find out if brand awareness is the key factor to impact consumers’ attitudes to a brand alliance. Further, it explains how spillover effect differs between a main brand and an ingredient brand when either positive or negative information about an ingredient branding product is presented to customers. Experiments are conducted to compare an array of consumer’s attitudes and spillover effects of ingredient branding products. Main brands and ingredient brands of different awareness levels are paired alternatively to design eight co-branding conditions. The study finds out brand awareness is a key factor that influences consumer’s attitudes toward a brand association. The combination of two high-awareness brands gains the more positive attitudes than other awareness combinations. However, the level of awareness has little to do with the strength of spillover effect. Attitudes to a brand alliance, positive or not, do not necessarily influence the attitudes to either allied brands. Spillover effect is not a symmetrical phenomenon, and therefore one brand usually gains more spillover effect than their counterpart. Generally the main brand in an ingredient branding has higher spillover effect than the ingredient brand.

In recent years, companies have increasingly built their businesses around network effects. Furthermore, ingredient branding has become a frequent occurrence in which companies develop their business model by incorporating their product into other products. During contact with the Swedish company Twiceme Technology and after investigating these phenomenon deeper, it appeared to be unique to have both network effects and ingredient branding in the company’s offering. That's where it was discovered a gap in the existing literature and the decision to learn more about how they're related by empirically studying companies that use network effects or ingredient branding in their business models. The overarching aim of the study is to look at characteristics among these phenomenon and analyze how network effects affect ingredient brands, and how they can be connected together. There were several phases in the empirical analysis method. A case sample group of four companies was analyzed in order to obtain a better understanding of the topic in practice. Following that, based on the previous results, the company Twiceme was evaluated as an ingredient brand with network effects. In order to address the research questions, the data extracted from the case sample group and Twiceme were analyzed and compared to theory.  From the study, it was found that achieving a strong market position for network effect companies is highly dependent on reaching the certain network size where the value of the network starts having an exponential increase. High brand equity in terms of brand awareness and reputation is needed to achieve a strong market position accelerated by network effects. Ingredient brands with network effects can generate synergy effects, allowing the network value to potentially grow even faster as a result of the increased brand equity from ingredient branding.  Based on the conclusions of the study and the proposed evaluation framework, this thesis aims to be useful for managerial decision-making and understanding of network effects and ingredient branding, and when they should explore new market opportunities. It also contributes to academia by presenting a novel research perspective in this field and provides material for future research to continue to investigate this subject. / Under de senaste åren har företag i allt högre grad byggt sina företag kring nätverkseffekter. Dessutom har ingrediensvarumärken blivit en vanlig förekomst där företag bygger sin affärsmodell på att integrera sin produkt i andra företags produkter. Under kontakten med det svenska företaget Twiceme Technology och efter att ha undersökt dessa fenomen, påvisades det vara unikt att både vara ett ingrediensvarumärke och ha nätverkseffekter i företagets erbjudande. Där upptäcktes ett gap i den befintliga litteraturen och beslutet att lära sig mer om hur de kan relateras till varandra genom att empiriskt studera företag som använder nätverkseffekter eller ingrediensvarumärkning i sina affärsmodeller. Studiens övergripande mål var att titta på egenskaper hos de bägge och analysera hur nätverkseffekter påverkar ingrediensvarumärken samt hur de kan sammankopplas. Det fanns flera faser i den empiriska analysmetoden. En fallgrupp med fyra företag analyserades för att få en bättre förståelse för ämnet i praktiken. Efter det, baserat på de tidigare resultaten, utvärderades företaget Twiceme som ett ingrediensvarumärke med nätverkseffekter. För att besvara forskningsfrågorna, analyserades data från fallprovgruppen och Twiceme och jämfördes med teorin. Från studien kan det konstateras att uppnå en stark marknadsposition för nätverkseffektföretag är mycket beroende av att uppnå en viss nätverkstorlek där företagets värdeerbjudande börjar öka exponentiellt. För att uppnå en stark marknadsposition som accelereras av nätverkseffekter behövs högt varumärkesmedvetenhet och anseende. Ingrediensvarumärken med nätverkseffekter kan generera synergieffekter, vilket gör att värdeerbjudandet potentiellt kan växa ännu snabbare till följd av det ökade varumärkeskapitalet från ingrediensvarumärken. Baserat på slutsatserna från studien och det föreslagna ramverket, syftar denna uppsats till att vara användbar för ledningsbeslut och förståelsen för nätverkseffekter och ingrediensvarumärkning, samt när de bör utforska nya marknadsmöjligheter. Det ämnar också till att bidra till akademin genom att presentera ett nytt forskningsperspektiv inom detta område och ge material för framtida forskning att fortsätta att undersöka detta ämne vidare.