CoreBrand Research Shows Some Well Known Consumer Brands Are Among the Least Valuable

NEW YORK, March 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- CoreBrand, a leading brand strategy and communications firm, and creator of the Corporate Branding Index®, which provides continuous benchmarking data, insights and corporate brand valuation for over 1,000 companies, across 54 industries, today announced the findings of an analysis it conducted that shows several major U.S. consumer brands are undervalued. La-Z-Boy, Chiquita Brands International, Ruby Tuesday and KB Homes were among the top popular, yet undervalued, corporate brands identified by CoreBrand.

"There are many elements that contribute to a company's overall value," commented James R. Gregory, CEO of CoreBrand. "Even when companies exhibit strong branding, they can be plagued by other factors that decrease the overall company value, such as weak financials, being part of an unfavorable industry, or a lack of diversification."

For over twenty years, CoreBrand has been quantitatively researching and measuring brand image for more than 1,000 companies across 54 industries and 10 sectors of the economy. CoreBrand determines brand image ratings, or "CoreBrand Power" by measuring a brand's familiarity and favorability on a scale where 1 represents the lowest measure of power and 100 represents a perfect score. These ratings are derived by conducting annual surveys of more than 10,000 senior business decision makers. "CoreBrand Equity" is the percentage of market capitalization that is represented by the value of the corporate brand.

La-Z-Boy
La-Z-Boy is a strong corporate brand that is clearly recognizable to consumers and synonymous to its product line. With a CoreBrand Power score of 54.7 and a CoreBrand Equity of 16.5 percent of market capitalization, La-Z-Boy's brand is comparable to mega-brands like GE and Microsoft. However, this company is confined with an image that makes it difficult to expand into other product markets. So while GE's CoreBrand Equity of 16.5 percent translates to $31.1 billion of market capitalization value, La-Z-Boy's same CoreBrand Equity only translates to $100 million of market capitalization. CoreBrand suggests that product diversification is necessary for this brand if it expects to experience any long-term growth.

Chiquita Brands International
Chiquita Brands International is experiencing a similar situation in that it has not been able to successfully communicate to the public the diversity of its product portfolio. Although Chiquita has a high CoreBrand Power of 49.9 and a high CoreBrand Equity of 13.9 percent of its market capitalization, its CoreBrand Equity only translates to a brand value of $50 million. Already well-known as an American producer and distributor of bananas, Chiquita Brands International could benefit from efforts to broaden its brand identify to focus on its other products.

Ruby Tuesday
With a CoreBrand Power rating of 35.0 and a CoreBrand Equity of 12.1 percent, Ruby Tuesday's corporate brand is only valued at $50 million.  The company has made numerous attempts to reposition itself away from the bar and grill segment and into the higher-quality menu dining segment, including going through a major rebranding effort as they merge into Morrison, Inc.  As Ruby Tuesday is still one of the largest casual dining chains in the U.S., the company needs to be committed to their brand in a convincing manner. Ruby Tuesday should create an advertising campaign that stands out from the competition, and it needs enough media spent behind it to convince customers of the changes that have taken place.

KB Homes
KB Homes' situation is not unique in that its value has been damaged as a result of the economy. KB Homes was the first company to be traded on the NYSE as a home builder, and it maintains a powerful and very well-recognized brand. The company currently has a CoreBrand Power of 16.7 and a CoreBrand Equity of 4 percent, which translates to $20 million. CoreBrand predicts that as the housing market begins to make a comeback, so too will the value of the KB Homes brand.

"One normally associates strong consumer brands with high value companies, but that isn't always necessarily the case," explained Mr. Gregory. "La-Z-Boy, Chiquita Brands International, Ruby Tuesday and KB Homes have an opportunity to utilize their brand assets to improve their overall company value. It is a strange dichotomy, but the innovative marketer will take advantage of this situation to build the bottom line of the company."

About CoreBrand
CoreBrand, an independent branding firm based out of New York, is the only firm that links brand identity to financial performance through data and analysis. CoreBrand helps organizations understand, build, express and measure their brands. Thanks in part to its unique CoreBrand®Analysis, the company is able to gauge the impact of a brand initiative upon the success of an organization.  CoreBrand is the creator of Corporate Branding Index®, a 20 year old index that provides continuous benchmarking data, insights and corporate brand valuation for over 1,000 companies, across 54 industries. To learn more about CoreBrand please visit http://www.corebrand.com.

For more information or to schedule an interview with a CoreBrand representative, please contact Katherine Herring of Levick Strategic Communications at 202-973-1315 or [email protected]

SOURCE CoreBrand