Branding in the red meat sector - A conjoint study from Germany

During the last years, low price products (e.g., private label) gain increasing market shares in the German meat market. Compared to other countries the share of branded meat from integrated production chains is very low and most fresh meat is sold unlabelled. This study analyzes the advantages of brands from an information economic perspective and emphasizes branding as an important quality assurance and signaling tool. As brand exte nsions offer the opportunity to introduce brands to new markets at much lower costs we examine the brand transfer from the poultry to the red meat market taking Wiesenhof, the German brand leader for chicken and poultry, as an example. We use conjoint and cluster analysis to calculate willingness to pay and market shares for different consumer segments. The results demonstrate, that branded meat reaches almost two third of market share while the low priced private label always gets the lowest proportions of consumer preferences. Given the choice, customers do not always prefer the cheapest offer but trust in branded meat even more. This market potential is actually not used to advantage. The overall total market share of meat brands lies below 5%.