Purpose: Prior research in ingredient branding (IB) has identified several important decision variables consumers use when evaluating IB alliances. This exploratory research aims to investigate the relationship between these variables and consumers’ buying likelihood of the IB alliance and the relative importance of these variables for low- vs high-involvement product categories. Design/methodology/approach: A study with the participation of 458 mTurkers was conducted and the data were analyzed using random forests. Findings: Findings reveal relative importance of different variables for an IB alliance and that these differ for low- vs high-involvement categories. Research limitations/implications: Being exploratory in nature, this research has several limitations, such as using only one high- and one low-involvement categories. Practical implications: Results of this research will help brand managers as they make decisions entering an IB alliance as well as with investing their budget on different aspects of their brand, and tailoring their marketing activities for low- vs high-involvement product categories. Originality/value: To the best of authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to discuss the relative importance of different decision variables in an IB context empirically.