Innovative Co-Branding. A case study of Swedish companies’ attitudes toward innovative marketing concepts

Abstract: This thesis addresses the difficulty to build a strong brand and capture the audience attention. In a noisy world, were consumers get bombarded by loud advertising and aggressive campaigns, companies are forced to adopt nontraditional, innovative brand strategies, including co-branding. The purpose of this thesis is to study how willing companies are to participate in an innovative co-branding concept. The aim is to find underlying motivations that drives their marketing- and branding choices. The study will also include companies’ view of related challenges, advantages and disadvantages. Additionally, a participation-willingness index will be provided in order to find similarities and differences between different company categories. This will be accomplished by addressing a range of different companies in a quantitative study, followed by 14 semi-structured interviews. The contributions to the empirical findings are then compared to existing literature within relevant fields. The research process is embedded into Co-Brand Concept’s customer discovery process and all participating companies have a connection to the marketing channel The Welcome Home Box. Conclusively, the author found that younger and often smaller companies in general were more willing to take risks through participation in innovative concepts. These companies did also have more flat organizations, and they were aiming brand awareness and immediate sales. It was also shown that companies found innovative concepts attractive during phases of transformation, where experimental approaches were suitable. These companies easily adopted The Welcome Home Box, which indicates an opportunity gap for innovative branding solutions. Additionally, it was found that less traditional (often larger) companies with hierarchical organizations were not as willing to take risks. They are aware of their relationships with different stakeholders, and rather focus on well-tested channels in order to keep their strong position at the market.