ACAPULCO LAB

"THE BENEFITS OF BRANDING"

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Branding can lift what you sell out of the realm of a commodity, so that instead of dealing with price-shoppers you have buyers eager to pay more for your goods than for those of competitors. Think of some people's willingness to buy the currently "in" brand of bottled water, versus toting along an unlabeled bottle of the same stuff filled from the office water cooler.

The distinctive value inherent in a brand can even lead people to dismiss evidence they would normally use to make buying decisions. I once saw one middle-aged Cambridge, Massachusetts, intellectual argue to several colleagues that Dunkin' Donuts' coffee tastes better than Starbucks'. So contradictory was this claim to the two companies' reputations for this demographic group that the colleagues refused to put the matter to a taste test.