The power of brand!

I would like to share with you all a recent experience and relate it to what we have learnt about branding and/or will be learning about branding. Around one week back my mobile phone broke down, I tried getting it repaired but the repairing cost was too high as compared to India, so I decided to rather buy a rather basic model for the time being and get my phone repaired once I get back to India.

So as a typical Indian consumer I enquired about price on a number of shops and thus finally find a shop close to our hostel. The shopkeeper was an old man, gave me quite a few options ranging from 60 dollars to 600 dollars, but as usual I was broke and had very little money! So I told him to narrow down the range to minimum, which is $ 60.

He finally displayed two models, one was a Nokia and other one was an LG, LG one was a nice phone with color display, and came with a 1 year warranty. Nokia model was one with a black and white display and also did not have a warranty. Now see the power of branding, the LG phone was a clear winner I terms of features, value for money and every other tangible aspect including the asthetics. I ended up buying the Nokia one. Why?

On my way back I was thinking about how what is the power of a brand, and how much a company can leverage on to it. It was sheer power of the brand Nokia which made me buy an inferior phone in terms of features but still some where I knew that in terms of quality, the phone I have bought is a better phone. Well, who knows!

I urge all the readers to share their experiences regarding various brands they buy and what drives them to give into these brands.

Madhur Dhawan

SMM- Decmber 2008