Brand, Identity and Reputation: Exploring, Creating New Realities ...

Introduction
Factors Affecting Brand Extensions Success for Business to Business Brands:
A Study of Fertiliser Firms Greece
Kapareliotis Ilias, Abertay Dundee University, United Kingdom
Turner Jason, Abertay Dundee University, United Kingdom
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the key success factors for business to business brands when gone
under brand extensions.
Design: 150 shop owners or sellers of fertilizers where interviewed. Interviewees were based all over Greece, and they
had long tradition in fertilizers selling, and they have been to the fertilizers market more than 20 years.
Findings: The brand extensions seems to be a good builder for relationships between the company it self, and the
different parts of the network. It can also be a common point of reference, or a starting point for valuation methods and
techniques for brand valuation systems customised to the company‘s brand valuation needs.
Practical implications: Based on the research findings managers of very well known brands need to handle properly
their brands and the brand extensions they are going through. Brand extensions can‘t stand alone if emphasis isn‘t given
to certain factors that will lead these brand extensions to success. The key success factors for brand extensions in a
business to business environment aren‘t so much different than the factors for business to consumer.
Originality value: The paper contributes to the literature as brand extension‘s strategy for industrial products isn‘t
researched as much as for consumer products. The research examines also the potential benefits of this branding
strategy in a certain industry as the business to business branding has recently developed.
Brand management as a marketing discipline is a relatively recent entrant to the stream of marketing literature.
Brand management was recognised as a formal discipline long after the leadership of branded products was established
into the market (Low Fullerton 1994). Branding literature became an important element of marketing discipline today
(Moorthi 2004).
In business to business environments things are different branding isn‘t meant to be so much important and not
meant to be relevant. Managers working in business to business markets think that branding should be used only in
business to consumers markets (Anderson et al 2004, Dunn et al 2004). As loyalty is the necessity for consumer
markets, and comes from rational or irrational criteria, in business to business context loyalty comes from other rational
behaviours than brands buying only ( Roberts 2004, Quelch 2003). Brands serve exactly the same general purpose in
business to business markets as they do in consumer markets. They facilitate product‘s identification among the
competitive ones, and differentiate these products. (Anderson et al 2004). Thus branding for business to business
markets becomes beneficial because of the following reasons:
1. It‘s a performance index
2. Increases the value of the product
3. Reduces risk, confusion, becoming thus quality guarantor
4. Creates attachment that business to business marketers don‘t have because of their mostly rational decision
making.
5. Identifies the attributes, and benefits of the branded products, in comparison with the unbranded ones.
Introduction
Brand extensions the tool by which firms introduce their brands into new or existing product categories is heavily
used through the last decades (Aaker 1990). Although a brand extension is an important strategy in practise, few studies
investigated how the brand extension strategy is actually used in a business to business environment (Baumgarth 1996,
Bevolo 2003). Scholars examined the impact of brand extensions for the business to consumers markets. Industrial
buyers are more rational and economic than consumers with determinants like product‘s performance, product quality,
delivery, after sales support e.t.c. (Bick et al 2008). That‘s why most of the times the buying centre buys strong brand
names and its extensions. (Keller 2000). Brand extensions strategy comes in two forms horizontal and vertical. In a
horizontal one, an already existing brand name is applied to a new product introduction in either a related product class
or in a product category completely new to the firm (Chen et al 2004). A vertical brand extension, on the other hand,
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