The impacts of brand equity on family farm performance: An empirical case study of Jiangsu Province

Brand equity delivers product quality information of producers to consumers, reduces consumers’ perceived risks and information search costs, increases consumers’ perceived quality and expected utility, becomes a bridge between consumers’ premium payment and producers’ high-quality production, and helps family farmers to improve business performance. Applying the signal theory and the utility theory and based on the family farm operation monitoring data of Jiangsu Province in 2018, this paper empirically analyzed the status of family farm brand asset utilization, operation and development, and explored the impacts of brand assets on family farm business performance. Results showed that 56.1% of the family farms had brand equity and the performance of family farms with brand equity was higher than that of family farms without brand equity. Among them, those with registered private brands had the highest business performance. Brand equity can significantly promote the performance of family farms. When further dividing brand equity into private brand and public brand, this research finds that private brand can promote family farm performance, while public brand cannot play its role in a clearly transmitting production quality information. Therefore, the government should actively guide family farms to build brand assets of agriculture, encourage qualified family farms to develop private brands, improve the access threshold of public brands, and strengthen brand governance.