The role of brand in society
In our societies, brands are meant to influence consumption. They are meant to influence the way consumers make decision regarding particular products. Aware of this fact, some companies capitalize on their brand names rather than anything else and they are likely to do anything to convince consumers that their products are superior to other products using their brand names. When companies manage to do this, they influence the way consumers perceive their products thereby influence consumption. They also influence the way consumers behave towards other products. Brands are also meant to create certain images. They are meant to serve as marks of standards, reliability and quality (Clifton and Sameena 47). During the industrial age, they served as marks of trust. To date this aspect has not faded away because some brand names such as coca cola serve as marks of trust in soft drink industry. Other brands such as Nivea and Duracell serve as marks of trust in their respective industries.
The influence of brands on people’s lives
In terms of influence, some people especially teenagers believe that brand names define them. As a result, they go for the most trending brands so that they can improve their personalities. Neil Boorman is a good example. He claims that for a long time he has been going for certain brands to improve his self-esteem. In particular, he claims that he has been putting on a crocodile photo rather than polo player on the breast of his shirt so that people can notice him (Boorman Para. 13). However, he has realized that those brands have not been able to improve his self-esteem thereby he has decided to abandon those brands.
Personally, I do not believe that brands are meant to improve our self-esteem though they sometimes do. My belief is that brands are meant to make companies wealthy at the expense of the people that believe in those brands. Take for example the new iPhone 6s that goes for $699 yet the cost of producing this phone is just $150. Why would somebody opt to buy this phone yet a Chinese one goes for $300? Some people link quality to brand names rather than linking quality to materials used to make products. As a result, they pay a lot of money to acquire those brands. In my perspective, people waste money buying brands rather than buying what they really need. Neil Boorman has realized this aspect and he has decided to stop going for brands because after all he has not achieved his goals of improving his self-esteem.
I do not dispute the fact that brands are meant to help consumers make informed decisions when buying products. In addition, I do not dispute the fact that brands serve as symbols of taste, belonging and wealth (Bettingen and Luedicke 308). However, I am opposed to the fact that brands make people better than they are. At the same time, I am opposed to the illusion that when you buy a certain brand that celebrities buy you will automatically become like them. On this aspect, I believe some people follow societies when buying brands rather than looking at the value they gain from the brands. On this basis, I think Neil Boorman is right when he says that his focus on brand name has caused him pain. It has caused him pain because he is considering burning the brands he owns currently. Majority of the young people especially the immature fans have fallen in the same trap. They buy the trending brands believing that they will change their personalities. At other times, they buy such brands because of peer pressure and as they do this they do not consider whether those brands will be appropriate for them or not. Their mentality tends to be that so long as their colleagues have certain brands, they too ought to buy such brands. On that basis, they buy brands that do not help them in any way rather than wasting their money.
Personally, I love electronics, but I do not understand why people opt to go for the costly ones. Like I said earlier on, I do not understand why people pay a lot of money to buy expensive electronics. For me, this is just a waste of money and it is unnecessary.
My analysis has established that some people believe that they can change their personalities when they go for the trending brands. Neil Boorman is a good example. He claims that for a long time he has been looking for certain brands so that he can top up his self-esteem and improve his social status (Boorman Para. 12). However, he has established that the fancy brands that he has been going for have not been able to improve his social status as well as top up his self-esteem. It would be important to note that Neil has established that the type of brands he has been going for have not been able to changed anything in his life. This is an important aspect because brands do not change personalities even if they appear to change them outwardly. For me, our inner characters are what matters to us most. They define us and dictate the far that we can go in our lives. Therefore, brands are unimportant to us because they are meant to influence our consumption behaviors and in so doing waste our money. Personally, I do not believe in expensive brands because they serve the same purposes as the inexpensive ones. My belief is that brand names are meant to enrich companies at the expense of consumers. Therefore, I do not advocate for the idea of going for the famous brand names.
With regard to the issue of destroying the brand names, I do not think this will help Neil Boorman in any way because even if he does so other people will not destroy those brands. As a result, the companies that produce the brands he has been chasing will continue prospering because other people will chase those brands as he has been doing. For me, the pursuit of famous brands only helps businesses prosper. This practice only promotes competition among companies because when people chase famous products they force the infamous companies to focus their attention on quality of their products. In this respect, the pursuit of famous brands can potentially breed irrational decision making processes and inappropriate comparison of products.
Overall, my opinion is that famous brand names and products are important in our societies, but we should not pursue them blindly because they are meant to enrich companies at the expense of the irrational decisions that consumers make. This serves as the basis for my argument that brand names just waste consumers’ money.
Work cited
Bettingen, Jean-Francois, and Luedicke Marius. Can brands make us happy: a research framework for the study of brands and their effects on happiness. Advances in consumer research, 36 (2009): 308-318. Print.
Boorman, Neil. Bonfire of the brands. BBC news, 14 June 2016. Web. 29 August, 2006. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5292860.stm>
Clifton, Rita, and Sameena Ahmad. Brands and Branding. New York: Bloomberg Press, 2009. Print.