Brand and product divestiture: a literature review and future research recommendations

The paper highlights the fact that brand and product divestiture does not receive much attention from top management and only passively taken when a firm’s current business is under difficulty. This inactive practice is considered to take away firms’ shareholder value. Though receiving more attention by firms recently, brand and product divestiture is not a simple decision. The paper then reviews the existing literature in related areas – a number of product portfolio management models, brand portfolio management models, and current research works relating directly to brand and product divestiture in M&A context. As the result of the review and analysis, the paper finds out the gap for the matter of brand and product divestiture – i.e. the comprehensive set of causes, strategies, decisional criteria, consequent processes, and detailed guidelines. Based upon the gap the paper raises several future research directions as its recommendations.