Varumärkessamarbeten mellan LVM och EVM vid kategoriutvidgningar
En Fungerande Strategi?
This thesis examines the possible beneficial effects of a temporary cooperation between a national brand and a private brand. The main hypothesis suggests that if a national brand wants to make a category extension to a remote product category, it should be able to decrease its risk by affiliating itself with a private brand. The national brand should through such a brand alliance be able to borrow some of the flexible characteristics that a private brand possesses to increase its associations with the new category. The survey consisted of 800 questionnaires with different cooperations between a private brand (ICA) and two national brands (Tropicana and Bravo). These were handed out to students in the universities of Stockholm. The respondents answered questions regarding their attitude towards the extension to a hedonic product category (sorbet) and to a functional category (vitamin pills). They also answered questions regarding an extreme extension to the popcorn category. The result achieved was contradictory which suggests that other factors have stronger influences than the flexibility of the private brand. As a result, the authors found that cooperation between a private brand and a traditional brand does not increase the probability of success in a new non-trivial category.