Measuring the Value of Ingredient Brand Equity at Multiple Stages in the Supply Chain: a Component Supplier's Perspective

The goal of this article is to conceptualize the Ingredient Branding strategy and propose tools for measuring value derived from brand equity at the component supplier’s perspective. We demonstrate how brand equity occurs and how it can be measured at three marketing stages: B2B, B2C and B2B2C.This paper characterizes different stages in the Ingredient Branding strategy. Furthermore, the paper provides a different measurement method for each stage, and highlights in the end, an overall view of all participants in the Ingredient Branding value chain. We show fi rst that measuring brand equity at the end user stage alone is not as useful as measuring brand equity at multiple stages of the value chain. The complexity associated with an Ingredient Branding strategy makes it a multi-stage branding and marketing effort. Therefore, various data and measurement tools are needed to meet the needs of marketing managers and scholars focused on brand strategies for differing stages of the value chain. We demons rate that existing brand measurement methods can be modified to analyze multi-stage, interrelated exchanges. The paper extends existing brand measurements to capture the value of an Ingredient Brand both qualitatively and quantitatively, at multiple stages of the value chain.