Utilization of multi-branding in business to business markets

Case company utilizes multi-branding strategy (or house of brands strategy) in its product portfolio. In practice the company has multiple brands – one main brand and four acquired brands – which all utilize one single product platform. The objective of this research is to analyze case company’s multi-branding strategy and its benefits and challenges. Moreover, the purpose is to clarify that how could a company in B2B markets utilize multi-branding strategy more efficiently and profitably. The theoretical part of this thesis consists of aspects of branding strategies; different brand name architectures, benefits and challenges of different strategies and different ways of utilize branding strategies in mergers and acquisitions. The empirical part, on the other hand, includes the description of the case company’s branding strategy and the employees’ perspective on the benefits and challenges of multi-branding strategy, and how to utilize it more efficiently and profitably. This study shows, that the major benefits of utilizing multi-branding are lower production costs, ability to reach wider market coverage, possibility to utilize common sales tools, synergies in R&D and shared resources. On the other hand, the major challenges are lack of product differentiation, internal competition, branding issues in production and deliveries, pricing issues and conflicts, and compromises in product compatibility and suitability. Based on the results, several ways to utilize multi-branding strategy more efficiently and profitably were found; by putting more effort on brand image and product differentiation, by having more co-operation among the brands and by focusing on more precise customer and market segmentation.