Brands: religion of the mass?

Brands and religiosity relationship

A study published by INFORMS theorize that brands and religiosity may serve as substitutes for one another because both allow individuals to express their feelings of self-worth. The interesting relationship between brands and religion has attracted the attention and imagination of both scholars and practitioners for many years.

Brand reliance weight

Yet strong theory and empirical evidence in support of this relationship is scarce. This study define brand reliance as the degree to which consumers prefer branded goods over unbranded goods or goods without a well-known national brand (e.g., store brands).

Consider the case where individuals are facing two products that are identical in all of their observable attributes, including price. If 75% of them choose brand A and the rest choose brand B, we can say that brand A has a higher brand equity than brand B (see, for example, Goldfarb et al. 2009). If our aim is to measure overall brand equity, the differences among the individuals (i.e., the fact that some individuals chose A and others B) are not of great interest. Here, however, we are actually interested in these differences, and to identify them we need multiple observations from each respondent.

Brand reliance benefits

These benefits can take many forms, including simplifying decision making, reducing risk, and providing benefits that go beyond functional benefits, such as offering experiential and self-expressive benefits (Aaker 1991). Consumers differ in how much they value such benefits and, thus, in how much they value brands. We introduce the notion of brand reliance to capture the value that consumers place on the benefits they derive from brands.

How does a brand can acquire power?

Brands and more generically symbols are acquiring weight or power from the act of expressing a feeling of self-worth or from the act of believing in it. Apple’s identity is “pleasant” and “attractive”. We could compare Apple and Microsoft and ask people who’s brands would have a soul, answers would be quite obvious, Apple has been able to create it’s own identity but with most importantly a strong aspect of “authenticity”.

If we continue to compare brands and religions, Belk and Tumbat (2005) argued that the Macintosh brand has a community following that is equivalent to a religion in many ways, characterized by a strong network of adherents, faith in the “good” (Steve Jobs), and general enmity toward a common evil (IBM, Microsoft, etc.). These are just two of several examples that demonstrate a shared interest in the fascinating relationship between religion and brands among both practitioners and academic scholars. They also demonstrate the great breadth with which people can think of the terms “brands” and “religion.” For example, the term brands may lead ne to think of concepts related to “loyalty,” “community,” “value,” and “positioning,” among others.

Brands reliance impact on product’s value

Brands reliance weight are medium for daily utility products such as Red beans but very high for accessories brands since accessories brands can multiply up to 12 times the price of a watch for simply having the original brand placed on the product which make brands reliance very important for products and brands who also have as purpose to fill the need of self-worth plus being useful to it’s buyers.

How it is applied in marketing?

BMW’s cars advertising are mainly based on purposing an experience on which the viewer should be attracted and able to fill it’s feeling of self-worth which which has the purpose of increasing the brand reliance weight and often doesn’t concern the product’s characteristics that much. Brands are mostly some kind of a composition of thoughts aggregated into it’s consumers which has the purpose to create some kind of “adept” such as Apple which is very similar as a sect in terms of consumer’s comportment on which the brand reliance is then impacting product’s value and consumer’s decisions.

How popular people are branding their image?

Singers, artists, actors, and most popular celebrities must brand themselves because it has a huge impact on their revenues. It can really be viewed the same way as for brands since it works the same way except that appearance, body language, and authenticity are the most important characteristics.

Popular people who's mainly valued for their work are those who need the less to have a powerful image and vice-versa, but when the image has an impact on the work's profits such as for singers and actors, the person's reliance act as a powerful amplifier and bring some kind of positive or negative power to the person depending on the reliance given by people.