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While extensive knowledge on branding and communication has focused on business-to-consumer context, despite the nourishment of the importance of strategic alliances between businesses in terms of co-branding has become discernible, a little attention has been given to business-to-business (B2B) context. This chapter tries to take attention to dual marketing communication, where they are trying to market their products and services to both individuals and businesses. More specifically, this chapter aims to emphasise ingredient branding as a form of co-branding considered as one of the revolutionary dual marketing communication strategies. Notably, the importance of ingredient branding is highlighted for industries and companies who have to design a strategic multi-channel communication plan not just for their customers but also for retaining the competitive advantage, increasing the brand strength for both sides and stimulating the sales. Further, this chapter elaborates the subject with prominent examples of ingredient branding, as well as explains how a communication strategy became an asset for manufacturers and suppliers who are in downturn and lead them to have a growth opportunity with maximising their brand values.

The final chapter of the book titled ‘Beyond multi-channel marketing: Critical Issues in Dual Marketing’ aims at summarising issues related to the concept of dual marketing (DM). Starting from the analysis of a structured literature review on the selected subject, spread across three decades and reflecting on the different contributions of the research showed in the present book, the chapter tries to open the path to giving to the topic a new guise. In order to fulfil this duty, not only works on DM and multichannel marketing were taken into account, but also other research paths that share several features with the main topic were under scrutiny.

Purpose – Stemming from extant literature on consumer brand narratives and the rising quest for consumption authenticity, the chapter aims at merging these two streams of knowledge. How can brand authenticity be defined and narrated? To what extent do companies and consumers interact? What are the consequences for branding?

Methodology – The chapter is case-based, and illustrates the branding strategy of l’Occitane en Provence, a company producing toiletries with a strong Mediterranean rooting. Data were collected through multisited ethnographic fieldwork in Paris and Manosque, Haute Provence. Depth and short interviews with customers and managers of l’Occitane were complemented by extensive observation and secondary data. The comprehensive dataset was analyzed consistently with interpretive research tenets.

Findings – Data document (i) five dimensions of brand authenticity contextualized to l’Occitane Mediterranean brand; (ii) the different branding strategies made possible to companies by the varied combination of these five dimensions; and (iii) the distinct profiles of brand consumers according to the specific authentic narrative each of them is more receptive to.

Practical implications – Implications for authentic brand narratives are drawn. I argue that when companies adopt a narrative approach to branding they can establish a stronger dialogue with customers and defend their competitive advantage more effectively. Actually, each brand narrative cannot be easily imitated by competitors since its imitation would turn out as a fake, unauthentic tale for the market.

Originality of the chapter – The chapter contributes to the fields of branding and authenticity, by extending the notion and understanding of consumption authenticity to brands.

Customers in business-to-business markets are sellers of goods and services on their own. Thus, business-to-business suppliers may exert an influence on their customers’ buying decisions when performing marketing activities toward the customers of the customers by employing the concept of “multistage marketing”. Multi-stage marketing involves all sales-related measures which are aimed at the subsequent market stages (“customers of the customer”) which follow one or several primary customers in order to influence the buying behavior of these primary customers. Although the positive impacts of such activities are known, business-to-business companies often exclude the customers further along in the downstream supply chain from their marketing plans. But in a business-to-business context, the demand is always derived from buying decisions made further down the supply chain. The primary customers buy products or services because they want to use them – directly or indirectly – for either the production or the sale of other goods and services. Hence, derived demand, which can be traced to the end-user's primary demand, can be seen as the basis of multistage marketing.

The most common form of multistage marketing is ingredient (co-)branding, which occurs when a marketer providing an ingredient or component to an OEM advertises the ingredient to the customer of the assembled product. In addition to ingredient branding, this chapter identifies several other forms of multistage marketing and examines the underlying dimensions and processes of the phenomenon. The design of a marketing strategy using the concept of multistage marketing and its preconditions are discussed on a theoretical basis and are illustrated through concrete examples. The chapter provides a number of best practice examples in order to elucidate the issues concerning multistage marketing and its application in a company's marketing strategy serving business-to-business markets.

The market for luxury products and services plays a significant role in the world economy. The luxury hotel market is a crucial segment within the global market for luxury products and services. Luxury hospitality recorded a 5% growth rate along with demand for luxury cruises recording the growth of 7%, the highest among all luxury segments. The remarkable performance of luxury products and services over a period is attributed to the laudable marketing communication strategies of luxury marketers. In this research, we aimed to analyse how a multi-brand hospitality firm differentiates its luxury brand with other luxury brands in the portfolio, using textual messages aimed to communicate the uniqueness of the brands in its official websites. The case study method and content analysis are adapted to achieve the research objective. The study results show that different luxury brands under the brand portfolio of Marriott International can communicate the differences through the textual contents. Most of the differentiation relies on brand-specific features, traditions, services, location of the hotel and metadata on the Internet, followed by branded differentiators. It may be concluded that Marriott has been successful to an extent in using text contents in the website to differentiate its luxury brands.

This chapter helps to establish a characterization system for industrial and consumer companies. Marketing science shows that industrial brands and consumer brands have to be managed in significant different ways. The reason is the variety of distinctions. Marketing literature often fall back to the same definition for companies. Usually, companies are defined business-to-business (B2B) when they deal with other companies and business-to-consumer (B2C) when they make their revenues with private consumers. However, both definitions do not represent the knowledge from marketing literature about the specifications in both market categories. The characterization system here separates companies by the demand drivers (derivate and origin) of their costumers, by their communication strategy, by the roles individuals play in the buying process, and recommend the appropriate branding strategy. The results of a survey about B2B knowledge show how important such a characterizing system for the discussion is. Often managers have no clear picture of a company in terms of B2B and B2C marketing. The system helps them to find a common basis for understanding the crucial issues, based on an empirical analysis.

In the following contribution, we examine ingredient branding as an increasingly widespread form of market communication. Ingredient branding can be defined as “strategic branding for production goods such as components, raw materials, auxiliary materials and substances … which later form part of an end product.” Ingredient branding therefore aims at the “promotion of a brand within a brand to the enduser.” Currently, this is not yet a very common marketing concept, but it is becoming increasingly important. It can be considered as belonging to business-to-business marketing or the consumer goods marketing field. On the basis of the Agency Theory we show that one important prerequisite for a successful implementation of ingredient branding is the appropriate design of the exchange relationships between cooperation partners of consecutive levels in the market and value chain. The point of departure here is mainly the incentive and controlling systems which govern the behavior of companies cooperating in ingredient branding. We demonstrate other prerequisites and success factors for successful ingredient branding concepts with the aid of well-known examples, such as the Intel Inside or the NutraSweet campaigns.