This article tries to describe the differences between products and brands. While it is not easy, the distinction between a product and a brand is a crucial job for every marketing manager.
Let’s start with asking ourselves why consumers would be willing to pay more for a well-known brand of phone than buy a non-branded cheaper alternative?
Tangible and intangible attributes of products
Products have both tangible attributes and intangible attributes.
Tangible attributes of a product are measurable features that can be easily compared with those of other products. These visible elements are the same to everybody and can be objectively assessed.
Intangible attributes of a product are subjective opinions and feelings of customers that cannot be easily measured, hence compared easily with other products.
Example 1: Walkman personal music player and first-generation PlayStation games consoles both made by SONY were both withdrawn from the market in the late 1990s. However, the SONY brand name lives on until these days doing better and better.
How is a product different from a brand?
1. Products are tangible
A product is the term used to describe what is being sold on the market to satisfy a customer need or want. Products are the end result of the production process sold – when inputs are turned into outputs.
Marketing managers need to understand what tangible attributes customers are looking for when making their purchasing decisions, e.g. what color of the car and which engine size they prefer.
2. Brands are intangible
A brand is a name, term, logo, symbol, sign, phrase, font, design or color – or any combination of these – that identifies the product (items or services) of the seller service within particular markets. Brands are used to distinguish a product from competitors’ products.
Marketing manager should also try to understand what intangible features and attributes customers are looking for when making their purchasing decisions, e.g. feel better than colleagues in the office.
Are brands more important than products?
Those in the business world who believe that branding is a great marketing strategy claim that a brand is far more important than the product itself. Here are the major differences including aforementioned intangibility:
- Intangibility. Successful brands represent intangible value that customers place on the actual physical product with tangible features.
- Uniqueness. Successful brands are unique and cannot be replicated, whereas products can be quite easily copied.
- Timeliness. Successful brands are timeless and last forever; whereas products will ultimately reach the end of their life cycle becoming obsolete.
Meeting customers ‘intangible expectations’ for a product is most commonly achieved by effective branding. Some products very often sell well because of the strong brand, hence it is the brand that helps to sell a product.
In fact, consumer decisions are not always easy to explain and weigh up making market research much less accurate and much more difficult.
