The role and importance of branding in agricultural marketing

A branding strategy is often employed in the marketing of manufactured or processed food products but many other food products have comparatively lower levels of branding. At the same time there are frequent calls to utilise branding as a marketing strategy for New Zealand’s export products. The branding literature to date does not seem to include any studies detailing the validity of branding for such products. In this study the theoretical relationship between the consumer’s requirement for branded products and the benefits to producers from branding are explored. Using a simple model developed from a theoretical framework, three hypotheses are tested using data collected from Christchurch supermarkets. The results provide some support for the ability of the model to predict the level of labelling used. However, the results did not show that labelling attracted a price premium for agricultural or horticultural food products