How Important Is "Branding" To You?

In My Humble Opinion
1

No, no, I do not mean the cowpoke hot-iron-in-the-fire branding.

Nope, not the human tatooing, either.

I’m referring to brand names with the clothes you may wear, the vehicle you may drive, yadda, yadda. How important is it for you to wear name-brand clothes (in their own right) and/or to be seen by others wearing name brand clothes?

Does the make and model of the vehicle you drive have greater importance than its reliability, its safety features and/or its potential resale value?

Do you buy/use sunglasses to make it easier in bright sun and/or protect your eyes against harmful UV, or just to be part of your crowd and be recognized, at $200.00 a pair?

Is being part of a fad so important to your psyche that common sense and practicality takes second best, if at all?

Is wearing a JC Penney knockoff abhorant to you that it must be Ralph Loren or that LaCoste shirt with the alligator?

Is your razor a brand-name using $12.95 for four replacement cartridges? FWIW, mine is brand name razor using ten for $2.50 cartridges. (And yes, those razor cartridges are identical to your name-brand, made in exactly the same factory by the exactly same company but carry a house-brand label.)

Now I don’t imply one must be one or the other, but do you? (For example, I drive a sporty Saturn SC2 (2001) that serves me well. It may not look like those souped up buzz bomblets with the putt-putt mufflers – sorry, but they are no comparison to the grand deep-throated V8s at idle by any means. You may very well beat me off of the green light and that’s ok. My ego doesn’t require the constant reassurance. But mine is a five-speed manual while most of those souped up buzz bomblets are whiney automatics. But I digress …)

Well …?

:smiley:

2

Almost completely unimportant to me. I can’t fathom paying, say, $100 for a pair of jeans when I can get for all intents and purposes the same jeans for $15, minus the A&F or whatever the hot brand label on it. The idea of paying Tommy Hilfiger or whoever for the privilege of wearing a chest full of advertising for them strikes me as bizarre. The kind of person I encounter who is that brand-conscious has in general been the kind of person I’m not interested in hanging around with. I shop at the dollar store for things like deodorant and razors and will buy generic for things like ibuprofen and store brand for foods. Why spend extra money for the same exact thing or near enough to it that I can’t tell the difference? I buy the soda that’s on sale and I don’t care whether it’s Coke or Pepsi or Dr Pepper.

Now I do have certain feelings of brand loyalty, which is much different. If I find something that works or looks good or what have you I’ll tend to stick with it. That’s extended to such things as computers and cars.

3

None whatsoever. In fact, I make it a point to not buy clothing with logos…its not always easy. Unless you’re paying me, I’m not going to advertise for you.

I agree with Otto though…there IS brand loyalty, but that’s a different matter.

4

some food i buy depending on the brand, just because i have tried cheaper things and they weren’t as good. but i don’t buy the food because it is that brand.

As with clothes, i am boring. i wear black t-shirt, and jeans…every day

but it does matter which t-shirts and jeans i buy. Fruit of the Loom make the best t-shirts ever…hanes is crap. And i buy Dickies pants, because they fit me very well compared to other pants. So i guess i do buy stuff because of the brand! i just don’t like to show it off. that always irks me

5

I’m loyal to very few brands, and the ones I insist on buying are because they work best for me. (The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Crisco. No other shortening makes my recipes turn out right, gotta have it.)

I could give a rat’s ass what someone else thinks about me not wearing Tommy Hillfinger or whatever his name is, which is probably why I only hang out with people who aren’t superficial like that. I wear whatever looks good from Wal-Mart, Catherine’s or Lane Bryant. I refuse to pay Nike money for the privilege of advertising for them.

Ditto for my car. My car’s paid for and I don’t pay out the nose for full coverage every month, that’s all that matters :slight_smile:

And the thought of $200 sunglasses is just … mind boggling to me. Who on earth has money like that to waste on sunglasses, and why aren’t they spending it on important things? :slight_smile:

6

Same as everyone else. Generic clothes such as you can find at Lazarus or McAlpins suit me just fine. Given the choice, I would rather not have brand clothing. I have picked up some Gap products via thrift stores for about one percent of the original price. They’re perfectly good clothes, but no better than anything else.

7

If I ever buy something in hopes of impressing someone else with the label, please shoot me.

8

I make a point of avoiding clothes with prominent branding; I just think it looks crappy. There are some items where I will deliberately seek to purchase one of a very narrow selection of brands, but only when those brands are synonymous with definite quality advantages; for example, I bought a G-Plan sofa set because I know the quality of the workmanship is such that it will outlast something that I might pick up from one of these high-pressure-discount-stores.

I will also avoid certain brands (in fact my brand-disloyalty is stronger and more extensive than any brand loyalties I may have) - I will not buy Lexmark printers because they are the very worst of the bunch for anti-competitive policies.

9

Clothes: utterly irrelevant. Besides, why should I pay to give someone free advertising?

Food: Some brands I prefer and will pay a bit more, but usually I go with what’s cheapest.

10

As asked (visible, to impress others): zero. If anything I have an antisnob snob thing (silly, leftover attitude from a different time in my life), I’m happy to show the generic or unknown brand label.

But as others have said, I know of brands that impress me for me to have them, because of the high quality I’ve received from them in the past, so I go out of my way to buy them.

I’ll buy the grocery store’s own cheapie brand of sharp cheddar cheese, but not their root beer, which is gonna be Stewart’s or Barq’s.

11

Like a lot of people, I’ve never quite gotten the point of paying someone for the privelege of advertising their crap. The only thing I care about the brand on is stuff where it actually makes a difference I can see in the quality or comfort of the product. Things like power tools, or maybe kitchen equipment. Cars, but only as far as the manufacturer’s reputation for reliability. (The subtleties of engineering and “the driving experience” are completely lost on me. I simply don’t care about driving at all, except as a way to get from here to there and back.) As long as my clothes aren’t shoddy, fit me reasonably well, and are reasonably flattering, I don’t care what kind of label is in them. I’m likely to stain them or outgrow them before they wear out anyway, so why worry about it? I’ll buy Lee Riders jeans pretty exclusively, because they fit me well and are proportioned the same way I am. I prefer White Swan scrubs, because their drawstring pants are comparatively low-rise (which means I don’t have to have to choose between having the crotch at my knees or the waist just under my boobs.)

12

Clothes - don’t care who made it as long as it fits.

Food - More “branded” here, I tend to use the brands my mom does. I can’t buy off brand tuna to save my life. And the only peanut butter I buy is Jif.

Everything else - doesn’t really matter.

13

I don’t pay for branding per se, but I’m willing to pay more for a branded product if it means I will be getting a better quality product. To take a couple examples from this page, an expensive pair of designer jeans often looks and fits appreciable better than a cheap pair; and expensive sunglasses with proper lenses may sit better and provide better protection that crappy sunnies. I’m inclined to wear generic stuff for the basics–t-shirts, athletic clothes, socks–and spend more if quality will make an appreciable difference (jeans, jackets, suits, ties, shirts, sunnies).

Of course, there’s no guarantee that an item is not going to ugly or of poor quality just because it’s toting a label, but it’s a darn sight easier to find nice stuff in up-market shops than in thrift stores or department stores.

14

We grew up poor and could never afford to get the brand names. Oddly usually when I start a story with “we grew up poor” it means that as an adult now being able to afford the thing in question I treat myself. However, in this case, it taught me that brands weren’t important. I never look at the brand name and almost always go for functionality.

15

There are a few things that I buy brand on, even in clothing; for instance, when my budget allows, I tend to buy/wear Vans shoes. Those shoes last forever and a day for me, and I really like the way that they look. However, if I find something at Payless that I think looks better (which has happened, especially lately, since Vans has changed their style), I’ll buy that instead.

Other things I buy brand on are deodorant (Secret Platinum Protection is the best thing ever), macaroni and cheese (it’s so cheap that even Kraft isn’t much, so why save 25 cents and end up with crap) and soda (although, admittedly, my “brand” is now the generic Kroger diet cola, but it’s still a brand).

16

Well, I like Volkswagens, good value to engineering. I really am not interested in a different brand of vehicle unless you start getting into esoteric requirements like a sudden need to pull a 30 foot RV trailer =)

Some foods I go for brand because they are dependable, and have the proper flavor profile [I will choose a knorr soup or seasoning mix over other brands, and I will go for the real deal Lea and Perrins Worchestershire sauce, or A-1 sauce, and definitely Heinze catsup.]

I prefer my clothing to fit properly, and I have found that faded glory and venezia brands fit fat chicks better than many other more expensive brands. i buy my sneekers by how they fit and general construction quality by hands on examination, not by brand.

i have a preference for Sony electronics, and though I have both a compaq desktop, a custom built desktop and an HP laptop, I prefer my custom biult desktop and will probably go with Acer for my next laptop upgrade [though that is mainly because my computer repair vodun really recommends Acer highly.]

So I would say that in some things, brand is very important and some things it isnt as important, determined on a trial and error basis=)

17

I don’t think the OP is asking about brand loyalty; I got the impression he/she was looking for someone to come in here and say, “But everyone thinks I’m cooler when I wear Tommy Hilfiger!” and then we could all bash them. Regrettably, no brand-slave idjit has turned up. But it would have been fun…

18

Cars: Not important in the least. If Bumfuck Motors manufactured a car that had everything I want (longevity, dependability, economy, good mileage), I’d buy one in a heartbeat. As it is, I drive a Honda Civic.

Clothes: I’m a t-shirt and jeans guy, so not very important. I do like Levi’s 501 jeans enough to pretty much wear them exclusively, but that’s more because I hate to shop for clothes, so I like knowing that I can buy them and they’ll fit.

Food: I tend to eat the same thing day after day. As such, I like the standarization you get from chains when I eat out: I know that Arby’s roast beef sandwiches will be the same anywhere, so I prefer them to an unknown mom-and-pop restaurant in a strange town.

Guitars: I have two main boxes, a Martin and a National, which are definitely name brands. However, I played lots of guitars before deciding that these sounded the best for my playing, so I don’t think the brand was all that important to me.

At 44, I appear to be passing into that age group that advertisers ignore because we don’t care about brands.

19

I’ve never cared about brand names before, except for my food (must have Butterball chickens, nothing else is as juicy).

However, there are instances where brand names are appropriate. For example, many realtors will buy flashy expensive cars merely for their brand name because they need people to think that they are affluent. When I am a lawyer, I plan to buy a luxury car for just that reason. I’ve got a Chevrolet Cavalier right now, and those things are the most dependable cars ever, and I would be perfectly happy with that; however, when you take a partner or a client out to lunch you want them to think you are successful.

Same with clothing. When you are in a profession where your appearance is important, you have to wear things that signify your success. Thus, while I may not wear brand name clothing, I will probably buy expensive stuff because silk looks so good.

As for those people in high school who wore Guess jeans with the label prominently displayed, well, I can’t stand them. And I don’t like the Hillfiger clan either.

20

I wear Victoria’s Secret jeans because they actually fit better than any jeans I’ve ever owned. I swear by them and will pay $50 to $60 for the fit. But it’s because the FIT…not because they’re made by Vicki.
Now I do have certain feelings of brand loyalty, which is much different. If I find something that works or looks good or what have you I’ll tend to stick with it. That’s extended to such things as computers and cars.
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Ditto. If it works well (and when you think about it, few products actually do what they SAY they’re going to do), I’m a customer for life.