| Summary: | Branding is becoming increasingly important to companies within the B2B-sector and they put a lot of effort and capital to develop and strengthen their brands. One way of working with brands is through ingredient branding. An ingredient brand is an alliance between two brands where the ingredient brand is applied on a host brand and works as an ingredient on the product. The purpose of ingredient branding is to create competiveness, differentiation and to create quality associations. Ingredient brands can be divided into emotional and functional categories. The functional fills a function for the customer while the emotional increases the value in an emotional aspect. Ethical brands works as emotional ingredient brands and the concept of ethical brands has become more commonly used as a market solution. Marketing managers have become ethically more sensitive, and they are largely convinced that customers and the public expect them to act in a morally acceptable way. The purpose of this study was to create knowledge about the most important aspects a company should take into consideration when establishing an ethical ingredient brand. And the research questions were: Which are the biggest risks when establishing an ethical ingredient brand? What are the possibilities when establishing an ethical ingredient brand? This research used a qualitative approach, using in-depth interviews with brand managers on Swedish ethical organizations to gain data. In the literature review six concepts could be identified: impact, risks, expectations, reason to cooperate, ingredient brand and finally marketing and InBranding. Based on these concepts the empirical data was presented. When the empirical material had been analyzed it could be concluded that for ingredient brands the main focus is to spread their message, not necessarily to gain profit margins. The ingredient brand then can use the host brands as a marketing tool. Furthermore a big risk for the ethical ingredient brand is to lose credibility due to unfulfilled criteria’s by the host brand.
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