Brand names have always been important. For years, a good brand can mean everything from quality and reliability to status and social cache. But in the last twenty five years or so brand names have evolved into “branding” as a cultural and marketing phenomenon. Without proper branding, products and services can either fall by the wayside or play second fiddle to those that have been served up to consumers and businesses with the proper branding identification.
We have become dependent upon branding. Without it, it would appear, few consumers could judge the quality of a product on its own merits. Without branding we lack the know how to determine how one product may differ from another in the way it is made, crafted, or serviced. We can’t really ascertain how it performs, whether in the laundry cycle or on the road. Despite the Internet and all the information sources we have available, there are relatively few places the average consumer can educate himself on the true character and craftsmanship of any given product. We know little about the skill it takes to make something just so, the materials used and how they are superior from the knock off varieties.
So we brand products and services and generate enough marketing that consumers believe either the truth or the hype, depending on the goods. The branding culture has had a tremendous effect on consumer habits and they way they shop. Our economy is based largely on consumerism, and the perception of someone’s wealth and position in society is what drives much of our economy. The lines of demarcation is such that without wearing, using or somehow adhering to the socially approved brands, you are considered a lesser person with no taste, no wealth and hardly any social distinction. Some people really don’t care about all that, but most do.
This kind of mindset certainly has its conveniences. You really don’t have to think much about what you are buying in order to cater to your own self-perceptions. You don’t have to know much about the product itself, but just the product elevates you to a certain social category. No matter that the product is actual quality in terms of construction ad design, the fact that it is perceived as such is all most consumers really need to make their shopping day.
To build their client bases, retail outlets especially rely on stocking branded products. You must cater to your targeted clientele. If you stock this product you are considered a lower level, big box type of retailer. If you stock that brand, then you are the mid-line, department store type of retailer. And at the upper echelon, you must stock the brands that cause shoppers to perceive you as exclusive. Coupled with the design of your venue and its geographic location, shoppers know you are ready to service their kind of folk.
But with the economic downturn, branding may have backfired. With reports of store closings, maybe 70 odd thousand retail outlets across the country, it is becoming abundantly clear that no one really needs all these venues. Surely, the economic dowturn is the largest factor, but perhaps this financial crisis has shed light on a problem that has existed for quite some time. Simply put, no matter where you go, you are finding the same merchandise in every place you shop. One store has no distinction from another. It is all the same stuff.
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You can go to any city on the planet and, largely, it is all the same stuff. It may vary from one venue to the other, but each venue offers the same merchandise on its social and economic level as the one you found the the last city you visited. In fact, you might be shopping in the same chain, buying the same stuff. Only the city you shop in is different.
So if everyone has the same offerings, small wonder retailers are going out of business, left and right. Small wonder consumers are reluctant to buy anything. Not only are they short of cash and credit, but they already have a half dozen of whatever it is being offered in any outlet at any given time. I hear friends tell me, “who needs it? I already have plenty of those.”
In a nation that prides itself in originality, there are few places carrying original goods. Perhaps it is time to see more retail outlets offering smaller batches of merchandise from original designers and suppliers. I realize there are economies of scale, but with staples there are alternate solutions to overcoming the challenges of economy of scale. It would be nice for a change to not see everyone wearing the same thing or finding in a house the same layout as the last house. With some merchandise, pots and pans, for example, sure it will be the same. But furniture?
Perhaps we need a more educated consumer. Pundits claim we are educated through the Internet, but do we really know the difference in woods in furniture, the types of finish, the distinctions in quality? Having watched shoppers in furniture stories, I would think not. In fact, the level of ignorance about the goods we are laying out money for is fairly astounding.
Maybe one way to stimulate this economy is to be a little more original. To understand quality and craftsmanship and realize the best things are built to last. Use them, wear them and allow them to take on the vintage textures of an original creation. Don’t buy junk, because it has a label you can recognize.
Of course the original designers in time may become popular. Once they do they will scale up production as people rush to buy their goods. They will buy blindly, with great faith it will boost their status in the eyes of others. And then these original products will become so popular we will have…branding. Oh, well.
