Evaluation of ingredient brands with network effects : Towards an Analytical Framework

Sammanfattning: In recent years, companies have increasingly built their businesses around network effects. Furthermore, ingredient branding has become a frequent occurrence in which companies develop their business model by incorporating their product into other products. During contact with the Swedish company Twiceme Technology and after investigating these phenomenon deeper, it appeared to be unique to have both network effects and ingredient branding in the company’s offering. That's where it was discovered a gap in the existing literature and the decision to learn more about how they're related by empirically studying companies that use network effects or ingredient branding in their business models. The overarching aim of the study is to look at characteristics among these phenomenon and analyze how network effects affect ingredient brands, and how they can be connected together. There were several phases in the empirical analysis method. A case sample group of four companies was analyzed in order to obtain a better understanding of the topic in practice. Following that, based on the previous results, the company Twiceme was evaluated as an ingredient brand with network effects. In order to address the research questions, the data extracted from the case sample group and Twiceme were analyzed and compared to theory.  From the study, it was found that achieving a strong market position for network effect companies is highly dependent on reaching the certain network size where the value of the network starts having an exponential increase. High brand equity in terms of brand awareness and reputation is needed to achieve a strong market position accelerated by network effects. Ingredient brands with network effects can generate synergy effects, allowing the network value to potentially grow even faster as a result of the increased brand equity from ingredient branding.  Based on the conclusions of the study and the proposed evaluation framework, this thesis aims to be useful for managerial decision-making and understanding of network effects and ingredient branding, and when they should explore new market opportunities. It also contributes to academia by presenting a novel research perspective in this field and provides material for future research to continue to investigate this subject.