Brand Valuation and Control: An Empirical Study

Abstract

In economies with a growing service sector, the importance of intangible assets like brands, customer relationships, and organizational capabilities is rapidly increasing, as is the importance of information and knowledge for the production of goods and services. New concepts in such areas as knowledge management or intellectual capital management underline the increasing importance of these “soft” production factors. Both financial and managerial accounting still focus on the “hard” production factors, especially the physical and tangible assets of the production area. From the managerial accounting perspective, the question is how a firm’s valuable intangible assets can be managed, controlled, and evaluated.

Brands represent very important intangible assets, that have been especially in the light of marketing research. We use an empirical survey, based on 132 German companies with brands, to investigate the state of the art of brand accounting, brand control, and brand valuation. The focus of our study is the general perception of brands as an (intangible) asset and as an investment, the organization of brand management, the valuation of brands for internal control purposes, and the tactical and strategic performance measures for brand management. We also examine the budgeting process, the brand-related decision making and the underlying incentive systems. Our results show a gap between the perception of brands as valuable intangible assets and the implementation of an adequate management control process (implementation gap). Our study discusses implications for better strategies in brand management and control that can also be used in the management control process of other intangible assets.