Abstract
Branded eggs have held a twenty-percent market share in Japan. The types of brand-names have diversified, but classifying the elements related to the brands into two types, concrete and abstract, this study focuses on clarifying the number of elements, name-types defined by the elements, relations between the name-types and prices or production costs. The study also analyses the difference of these between upstream and mid and down-stream. Analysis of 527 samples of branded eggs show that most of the brand names consist of one or two elements. The element of simple image is the most common, and the influence on prices, in case of two or three , is significantly high for wholesale and retail prices. The abstract name-type is more popular at mid and down-stream levels than upstream. The prices related to direct sale among each name-type shows little gap at an upstream level, but the prices in abstract name-type are higher than in concrete name-type at the mid and down-stream.
