Valuation of Brands - A Critical Comparison of Different Methods

In recent years intangible assets have become increasingly important for many companies. One significant category of intangible assets are brands. Because of their growing importance, researchers have begun to develop methods to better measure and account for brand names. Traditional brand management performance measures usually are short-term oriented and give no incentives to invest in brands but rather lead to short-term activities which harm longterm brand value. This is alarming, especially for companies where brands are the main assets. Brand value, if correctly measured, could represent a useful goal for the management of brands. In mergers and acquisitions, brand value could help in determining a corporation's price and support the decision process. Another area where a valid brand valuation method would be helpful is the licensing of brands. Finally, brand valuation is needed for balance sheet purposes. So far, current accounting standards in Germany assign no balance-sheet value to brand names until another firm acquires them. But since brands are legal in balance sheets of companies in other European countries, German law might change in order to harmonize European law. Then, an accepted valuation method will be indispensable. Depending on the purpose of brand valuation and on the method used, different brand values will result. But as long as valuation methods are not objective and comparable, companies will be reluctant to the valuation of brands. This paper evaluates the usefulness of methods in order to use brand value as a long-term performance measure in brand management and controlling.