Is there any good in brands?/ Ima li što dobro u robnim markama?

To si pitanje ponajprije postavljaju potrošači. Međutim, i tvrtke mogu katkad sumnjati. I sama riječ ‘brend’ postala je toliko brendirana u hrvatskom jeziku da robna marka kao njezina inačica izgleda kao neugledni proizvod u društvu svoje blještavije inačice.

Brands have nowadays become associated with high status, high prices and no more than average quality. For that reason, many customers feel there isn’t much good in them. However, what motivated companies to establish such functions as brand management was the prospect of putting an outrageously high value on products that did not cost much to develop. It seems that the times when this function was looked down upon are long gone.

The reasons are obvious: a well-established brand with a favourable image will allow companies to put more than generous mark-up on their products. A little more investment into maintaining this brand awareness and there seems to be nothing in the way to long-lived business prosperity. What is more, experts on branding have noticed that a strong brand name can be successfully used to launch a new product. By association with a name that has become synonymous with quality and class, a new product will stand a better chance of gaining a foothold on the market with a minimum of marketing expenses. This practice of brand stretching has become widespread in fashion industry where one brand is frequently stretched to include a heterogeneous product range from clothes and accessories to perfumes, toiletries and soft drinks. It is therefore no wonder that brands have become a very valuable asset in their own right.

Companies should, nonetheless, exercise caution in applying this method to avoid the destiny of the most famous brand stretching example, that of the Virgin Group. As a result of the group’s diversification into selling trans-Atlantic flights, records, cola, lingerie, electricity, train tickets, concerts, holidays and mobile phones, the brand message has weakened and its image has suffered as a result. The Virgin brand used to have the image of a rebel, siding with the consumer in the face of bureaucracy and monopoly, but it has lost it with Virgin Trains and Virgin Credit Card.

It does not come as a surprise that companies launching competitive products want to somehow appropriate the reputation enjoyed by a successful brand by creating lookalike products. Is it just a mere coincidence that the packing of Cokta bears a certain resemblance to Coca Cola? And the names are not that different either.

But what is in it for a consumer? Apart from being an unmistakable sign of status that everyone eager to make it plain to the world at large can resort to, brands do make life easier for an average consumer. A lot of time is saved on rummaging through cluttered supermarket shelves by going straight for a well-known brand that guarantees unfailing quality. This force of habit is perhaps the strongest element in staying loyal to a brand. Nowadays supermarkets sell their own-label products, whose favourable price just reflects the fact that all the marketing efforts have been avoided while the quality has been maintained.