A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers.[2][3][4][5] Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and store value as brand equity for the object identified, to the benefit of the brand's customers, its owners and shareholders.[6] Brand names are sometimes distinguished from generic or store brands.

The practice of branding - in the original literal sense of marking by burning - is thought to have begun with the ancient Egyptians, who are known to have engaged in livestock branding as early as 2,700 BCE.[7][need quotation to verify] Branding was used to differentiate one person's cattle from another's by means of a distinctive symbol burned into the animal's skin with a hot branding iron. If a person stole any of the cattle, anyone else who saw the symbol could deduce the actual owner. The term has been extended to mean a strategic personality for a product or company, so that "brand" now suggests the values and promises that a consumer may perceive and buy into. It includes the voice and the tonality of the business. Over time, the practice of branding objects extended to a broader range of packaging and goods offered for sale including oil, wine, cosmetics, and fish sauce and, in the 21st century, extends even further into services (such as legal, financial and medical), political parties and people (e.g. Lady Gaga and Katy Perry). Branding in terms of painting a cow with symbols or colors at flea markets was considered to be one of the oldest forms of the practice.


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In the modern era, the concept of branding has expanded to include deployment by a manager of the marketing and communication techniques and tools that help to distinguish a company or products from competitors, aiming to create a lasting impression in the minds of customers. The key components that form a brand's toolbox include a brand's identity, personality, product design, brand communication (such as by logos and trademarks), brand awareness, brand loyalty, and various branding (brand management) strategies.[8] Many companies believe that there is often little to differentiate between several types of products in the 21st century, hence branding is among a few remaining forms of product differentiation.[9]

Brand equity is the measurable totality of a brand's worth and is validated by observing the effectiveness of these branding components.[10] As markets become increasingly dynamic and fluctuating, brand equity is built by the deployment of marketing techniques to increase customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, with side effects like reduced price sensitivity.[8] A brand is, in essence, a promise to its customers of what they can expect from products and may include emotional as well as functional benefits.[8] When a customer is familiar with a brand or favors it incomparably to its competitors, a corporation has reached a high level of brand equity.[10] Special accounting standards have been devised to assess brand equity. In accounting, a brand, defined as an intangible asset, is often the most valuable asset on a corporation's balance sheet. Brand owners manage their brands carefully to create shareholder value. Brand valuation is a management technique that ascribes a monetary value to a brand, and allows marketing investment to be managed (e.g.: prioritized across a portfolio of brands) to maximize shareholder value. Although only acquired brands appear on a company's balance sheet, the notion of putting a value on a brand forces marketing leaders to be focused on long term stewardship of the brand and managing for value.

The word "brand" is often used as a metonym referring to the company that is strongly identified with a brand.[11] Marque or make are often used to denote a brand of motor vehicle, which may be distinguished from a car model. A concept brand is a brand that is associated with an abstract concept, like breast-cancer awareness or environmentalism, rather than a specific product, service, or business. A commodity brand is a brand associated with a commodity.

The word brand, originally meaning a burning piece of wood, comes from Middle English brand, meaning "torch",[12][13] from Old English brand.[14] It became to also mean the mark from burning with a branding iron.[12]

Diana Twede has argued that the "consumer packaging functions of protection, utility and communication have been necessary whenever packages were the object of transactions".[18] She has shown that amphorae used in Mediterranean trade between 1,500 and 500 BCE exhibited a wide variety of shapes and markings, which consumers used to glean information about the type of goods and the quality. The systematic use of stamped labels dates from around the fourth century BCE. In largely pre-literate society, the shape of the amphora and its pictorial markings conveyed information about the contents, region of origin and even the identity of the producer, which were understood to convey information about product quality.[19] David Wengrow has argued that branding became necessary following the urban revolution in ancient Mesopotamia in the 4th century BCE, when large-scale economies started mass-producing commodities such as alcoholic drinks, cosmetics and textiles. These ancient societies imposed strict forms of quality-control over commodities, and also needed to convey value to the consumer through branding. Producers began by attaching simple stone seals to products which, over time, gave way to clay seals bearing impressed images, often associated with the producer's personal identity thus giving the product a personality.[20][need quotation to verify] Not all historians agree that these markings are comparable with modern brands or labels, with some suggesting that the early pictorial brands or simple thumbprints used in pottery should be termed proto-brands[21] while other historians argue that the presence of these simple markings does not imply that mature brand management practices operated.[22]

Scholarly studies have found evidence of branding, packaging, and labeling in antiquity.[23][24] Archaeological evidence of potters' stamps has been found across the breadth of the Roman Empire and in ancient Greece. Stamps were used on bricks, pottery, and storage containers as well as on fine ceramics.[25] Pottery marking had become commonplace in ancient Greece by the 6th century BCE. A vase manufactured around 490 BCE bears the inscription "Sophilos painted me", indicating that the object was both fabricated and painted by a single potter.[26] Branding may have been necessary to support the extensive trade in such pots. For example, 3rd-century Gaulish pots bearing the names of well-known potters and the place of manufacture (such as Attianus of Lezoux, Tetturo of Lezoux and Cinnamus of Vichy) have been found as far away as Essex and Hadrian's Wall in England.[27][28][29][30] English potters based at Colchester and Chichester used stamps on their ceramic wares by the 1st century CE.[31] The use of hallmarks, a type of brand, on precious metals dates to around the 4th century CE. A series of five marks occurs on Byzantine silver dating from this period.[32]

In ancient Rome, a commercial brand or inscription applied to objects offered for sale was known as a titulus pictus. The inscription typically specified information such as place of origin, destination, type of product and occasionally quality claims or the name of the manufacturer.[38] Roman marks or inscriptions were applied to a very wide variety of goods, including, pots, ceramics, amphorae (storage/shipping containers)[21] and on factory-produced oil-lamps.[39] Carbonized loaves of bread, found at Herculaneum, indicate that some bakers stamped their bread with the producer's name.[40] Roman glassmakers branded their works, with the name of Ennion appearing most prominently.[41]

Scaurus' fish sauce was known by people across the Mediterranean to be of very high quality, and its reputation traveled as far away as modern France.[42] In both Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum, archaeological evidence also points to evidence of branding and labeling in relatively common use across a broad range of goods. Wine jars, for example, were stamped with names, such as "Lassius" and "L. Eumachius"; probably references to the name of the producer.

A characteristic feature of 19th-century mass-marketing was the widespread use of branding, originating with the advent of packaged goods.[15] Industrialization moved the production of many household items, such as soap, from local communities to centralized factories. When shipping their items, the factories would literally brand their logo or company insignia on the barrels used, effectively using a corporate trademark as a quasi-brand.[54]

The process of giving a brand "human" characteristics represented, at least in part, a response to consumer concerns about mass-produced goods.[57] The Quaker Oats Company began using the image of the Quaker Man in place of a trademark from the late 1870s, with great success.[58] Pears' soap, Campbell's soup, Coca-Cola, Juicy Fruit chewing gum and Aunt Jemima pancake mix were also among the first products to be "branded" in an effort to increase the consumer's familiarity with the product's merits. Other brands which date from that era, such as Ben's Original rice and Kellogg's breakfast cereal, furnish illustrations of the trend.

By the early 1900s, trade press publications, advertising agencies, and advertising experts began producing books and pamphlets exhorting manufacturers to bypass retailers and to advertise directly to consumers with strongly branded messages. Around 1900, advertising guru James Walter Thompson published a housing advertisement explaining trademark advertising. This was an early commercial explanation of what scholars now recognize as modern branding and the beginnings of brand management.[59] This trend continued to the 1980s, and as of 2018[update] is quantified by marketers in concepts such as brand value and brand equity.[60] Naomi Klein has described this development as "brand equity mania".[61] In 1988, for example, Philip Morris Companies purchased Kraft Foods Inc. for six times what the company was worth on paper. Business analysts reported that what they really purchased was the brand name. e24fc04721

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