Marketing i Zarządzanie

The purpose of the paper is to identify brand strategies on the energy drinks market, which are products that are difficult to differentiate in other ways than using marketing tools. The position of a brand on the market, such as a leader or occupying a market niche and the role of a brand in the market, such as creating trends or aspiring brand, should determine the brand strategy. Applied research methodology: empirical research was carried out, including field studies on the market using the observation method. Conclusions are the result of market research and analysis can be summarized as follows: the most common variant of a brand strategy is the use of the individual brand, both for the strongest brands in the market and the weakest brands but market leaders for their individual brands use very strong promotional support based on commitment to sport and the weakest brands are deprived of the support. On the other hand, brands with market aspirations and not as prominent as leaders, use a branding strategy that involves the use of a third-party brand (endorsement). On the energy drinks market, the most common variant of this branding strategy is the recommendation, which is to use the brand of a well-known public person, most often sports stars. Research shows that for this type of product, which is difficult to physically differentiate but at the same time is challenging the consumer's emotions and their opening for innovations, effective branding is an effective way of differentiating the products and gaining competitive advantage in the market. For this market, it is a branding strategy based on well-known people recommendations.