Corporate governance of SME’s and branding strategies

This paper aims to clarify the theoretical foundations of corporate governance, corporate brand and to show the relationship between the two concepts in the context of agri-food SME of the Languedoc-Roussillon region in France. Intangible assets and particularly brands play a very important role in strategies success. The importance of intangible assets is now well recognized by both companies as researchers despite the complexity of their evaluation. Thus, building strong brands is one of the most important objectives of a company to maximize turnover and profit. Due to the economic crisis, and a lack of finance capacity, many SMEs have been forced to open their capital to new shareholders who provide capital but also change in steering companies. Based on agency and stewardship theories, we analyze theoretically whether the adoption or changing of branding strategies is guided by particular modes of governance or market imperatives and marketing strategies. We find that corporate governance influences branding strategies in SMEs through the role of the manager, the ownership structure and the SMEs size.