Branding and You
Wallace
As consumers, we are surrounded by brand images. They’re on our coffee cups, our
electronics, our cars, and our favorite websites. They are on our clothes, our toothpaste,
and our business cards. They’re everywhere. But how do you define a brand? How do
companies use them? And how do they affect our consumer attitudes and behavior?
Here are a few things you might not know about branding.
*Brands have been around for centuries and allow firms to distinguish the goods of one
producer from those on another. The word “brand” is derived from the Old Norse brand
which means “to burn.” And, to this day, brands are still the means by which some
ranchers mark their livestock to identify them.
* A brand is much more than a word or a symbol. It is a collection of elements (names,
logos, symbols, package design and more) that has created a certain amount of
awareness, reputation, prominence, and so on. In the marketplace, we see a wide variety
of brand names. Some firms, like Google, use their company name. Others, such as
Procter and Gamble, use brand names unrelated to the company name like Tide or
Crest.
*For many firms, their most valuable asset is the brand name associated with their
products or services.
*How it works within a product category, the consumer perceives differences among
brands based on one or more attributes. Therefore, marketers benefit from branding
whenever a consumer needs to choose among competing offerings.
*As consumers, a strong brand can aid in our decision-making, reduce our risk and set
expectations for our desired experience for the product or service. When you’re in the
store looking for a product you need, you don’t have the time or resources to research a
product’s effectiveness, survey other shopper about their experiences with it or
exhaustively examine the packaging of each item. You look for the colors or shapes that
you know, you recognize a brand, and you go with it.
*Our brands. We live in a complex world with competing demands on our time, and a
strong brand can save us time. It can also come to signify quality and positive or negative
experiences we have with the product it represents. This explains why we might become
loyal to or even develop a strong personal identity with a brand and the corporation and
its relation to legal, legislative, social and economic issues.
*Corporation brands in American Colonies in 1750's had their effect on legislative, social
and economic issues as well as today. One example of a of a single manufacturing
corporation during its formative years at that period of time is...
To be continued...
To read more Karl Wallace short stories go to: Karlwallaceblog.blogspot.com
