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Abstract
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%.