History of Branding.
A brand is a “name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.” Branding began as a way to tell one person’s cattle from another by means of a hot iron stamp. A modern example of a brand is Coca Cola which belongs to the Coca-Cola Company. The word “brand” is derived from Old Norse “brandr” meaning “to burn.” It refers to the practice of producers burning their mark (or brand) onto their products.
Factories established during the Industrial Revolution introduced mass-produced goods and needed to sell their products to a wider market, to customers previously familiar only with locally-produced goods. It quickly became apparent that a generic package of soap had difficulty competing with familiar, local products.
The packaged goods manufacturers needed to convince the market that the public could place just as much trust in the non-local product. Campbell soup, coca-cola, juicy fruit gum, aunt jemima, and quaker oats were among the first products to be ‘branded,’ in an effort to increase the consumer’s familiarity with their products.
By the 1940s, manufacturers began to recognize the way in which consumers were developing relationships with their brands in social/psychological/anthropolical sense.
From there, manufacturers quickly learned to build their brand’s identity and personality, such as youthfulness, fun, or luxury.
Consumers today buy “the brand” instead of the product.
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