Brand valuation. A case study on Lindt & Sprüngli

Typically absent from financial statements, the brand of a company remains most times in the dark of finance. After all, it is the unconscious rationale behind consumers ́ or employees ́ choices for a product or a company, and how would you capitalize that? Some would say it is even esoteric.Nevertheless, its importance cannot be undermined. Brands are the most important individual asset of many companies and, as such, to know its value can be key for the company ́s decision making. Built through years of investments in recognition, the brand is associated with certain product characteristics such as quality or price, but also eco-friendliness or fair trade. Perception, therefore, is key to understand its value.We have tried in this research paper to gather the predominant valuation methods in the industry, using themto value Lindt as brand. The broad range of results yielded by the different methods must not come as a surprise; as mentioned, the value is dependent on the evaluator ́s perception of the brand. While some of the methods provide different solutions to tryto objectivize this perception, this remains a subjective task after all. As a result, the main objective of this paper is to evaluate the relevance of each method, providing recommendations on the conditions to use one or the other Outgoing