Our research has been driven by the apparent lack of rigorous theory within the branding literature. Theoretical concepts have seldom been linked to business theory. This article presents an approach to branding which links branding to different approaches to entrepreneurship and uncovers the essential role of brand strategies when connecting branding to the management literature. Strategy and branding overlap and strategy links contemporary branding and entrepreneurship literature. There are various approaches to entrepreneurship which is relevant to the analysis of brand strategies. For the sake of simplicity we have divided them into two strands, the business school approach and the Schumpeter school. Essential to our understanding of brands is the ability of brands to decrease the transaction cost and reduce the information asymmetries between consumers and producers in the market. By relying on brands the actors in the market can reduce their search and information cost and the total cost of performing a market transaction.