When Products and Brands Trade Hands: A Framework for Acquisition Success

This research examines the influence of a firm’s focus on either products or brands in an acquisition announcement on investor reactions and value creation for the acquiring firm. We conduct an event study of product and brand acquisitions in multiple business-to-consumer industries over a 30-year period (1980–2012). We find that value creation from such acquisitions depends on target resource strength and resource fit (relatedness between the...