Industrial brand management: a distributor’s perspective in the UK fine‐paper industry

Deals with brand management issues concerning brand as a resource for an industrial distributor. The brand resource can either be controlled by the producer – producer brand – or the distributor – private label brand. Analyzes the characteristics of managing the brand resource depending on whether it is a producer or private label brand. This is done from the perspective of the distributor. In order to undertake this research task, a theoretical framework derived from the industrial networks approach is used. The designed framework focuses on three central concepts – the resource intradependence, the resource interdependence, and the resource interdependence connection. The framework is analyzed on three respective levels, i.e. the company, the relationship and the network levels, and we present the results of the analysis, which indicate what influences the opportunities and constraints that management are faced with when making decisions concerning branding in an industrial context. The data has been collected through personal interviews among paper producers and paper merchants within the fine‐paper industry in the UK.