What are Brands? How are they different from products?

Ever since more firms and other organizations have come to the realization that one of their valuable assets is the brand names associated with their products or services. In today’s increasingly competitive world, all of us, as individuals or as business managers face more choices with less time to make them into brands. Thus a strong brands ability to simplify consumer’s decision making, reduce risk and set expectations is invaluable. Creating a strong brand which would deliver the promises made by the organisation, maintain and enhance the strengths of the brands over the period of time, is a management imperative.

It is very important to have a deeper understanding of the difference between a brand and a product without which understanding psychological principles at the individual or organisational level in order to make better decisions about brands is very difficult.

So first let us try and understand what brands are? A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors, whereas a product is anything we can offer to a market for attention, acquisition, use or consumption that might satisfy a need or want. In simple terms we can say that brand is the identity of a product.

In marketing, a brand is a symbolic manifestation of all the information connected with the company, product or service. It is typically composed of name, logo, and other visual elements such as images, colours, and icons. Studies have shown that brands put forth an impression to the consumer on what to expect of the product or service being offered. Examples of brands are product (Coca-Cola), service (Eurostar trains), company (L&T Infotech) or even an individual (Michael Jordan), most popular fast food franchise (Mc Donald’s).

On the other hand product is more than just a material object. It is t is also an inclusive package of benefits or satisfactions that the consumer or buyer may achieve upon purchase or usage. A product is the total amount of all physical, psychological, symbolic, and service attributes. Examples of products are hamburgers, fries, soft drinks etc.

By creating perceived differences among products through branding and by developing a loyal consumer franchise, marketers create value that can translate to financial profits for the firm.