The impact on brand value of operating expenses: A research on companies in Brand Finance Turkey-100

Companies put up with a number of expenses for research and development, marketing and management activities with the aim of increasing their brand value or creating a new brand. These expenses are stated respectively as Research&Development Expenses, Marketing, Sales&Delivery Expenses and General Administration Expenses under the title of operating expenses. Operating expenses such as research and development and marketing should be evaluated in detail for the companies because of companies' including investment expenditures. In addition, some components of these expenses are important for the companies in terms of not only their impact on realization period but also their being evaluated as investment component. Determining the impact of operating expenses on brand value and determining the impact of which activity category on brand value is an important issue that companies need to address nowadays. In this context, the purpose of the research is to determine the effect of the Research&Development Expenses, Marketing, Sales and Distribution Expenses and General Management Expenses on the brand value which form the operating expenditures. For this purpose, 30 companies with complete operating expenses from Brand Finance Turkey-100 list, whose brand value was announced between 2012 and 2014, have been included in the research. The obtained data have been analyzed by using the multiple linear regression model and correlation analysis in the SPSS20 package program. As a result of the research, it has been determined that Research&Development Expenses, Marketing, Sales and Distribution Expenses and General Administration Expenses which constitute the operating expenditure types have a significant effect on brand value. It has also been found that there is a positive correlation between brand value and each type of operating expense. In addition, it has been determined that the operating expenditure type that has the greatest effect on brand value is Research&Development Expenditures. Key Words: Brand Finance, Operating Expenses, Brand Value.