Ingredient Branding as a Brand Building Instrument: How Ingredient Brands Gain from Co-Branded Extensions

The use of co-branded ingredients has become a popular means of improving customer response to brand extensions. Research in this area has however been limited to the host brand`s perspective. The present study shifts the focus to the ingredient brand`s perspective. The author develops a framework to examine how ingredient brands are affected when featuring co-branded extensions. The experimental results confirm that exposure to co-branded extensions alters customer perceptions of the ingredient brand. Both the ingredient brand`s attribute associations and its perceived skilfulness in the extension category are enhanced. Furthermore, the results indicate that co-branding of extensions positively affects evaluations of other host brands` subsequently introduced products featuring the same ingredient brand.