Brand management economy: A game theory approach

Brand management is one of the significant administration areas in the field of strategical decision-making of firms. The importance of the brand management based on from the influence on maximization of the firm by affecting consumers' choices. Firms have needed to apply new methods for the sustainable competitive advantage, because the competitive conditions have become more difficult in these days. "Co-branding" must be understood separetely to other brand strategies and strategic alliances in terms of advantages of it. Co-branding is a brand strategy which is also a sort of cooperation that at least two firms make business combination together or built a new brand name for a specific period of time. Questions about how firms make decisions, how they affect consumers and the efficiency in the market of firms are sought for an answer in the co-branding strategy which becomes important in recent years.Game theory which has become an area of microeconomics helps to analyze the actions of firms in strategical circumstances. In this context, the game theory is an important instrument in terms of expressing the firms strategies and making competition analyses. Managerial and behavioural aspects of co-branding can be explained with game theory models at the same time. In this study the game theory models of the brand strategy co-branding and brand competition are examined. The game model in which nature decides randomly and because of that changes demanding situations is introduced in this thesis based from the study of Rodrigues et al. (2009) and accordingly, the results are discussed. Keywords: brand competition, brand management, co-branding, game theory, strategic alliances