Today, most individuals are surrounded by brands; they are pervasive. Every product we use has a specific brand identity that permeates our consciousness, including the gum we chew, the music player we use, the automobile we drive, and the newspaper we read. We all have thoughts about them as well; words like Wrigley’s, iPod, Toyota, or Washington Post automatically conjure up connotations that are unique to us.
These connections, however, do not just appear in our brains at random; rather, they are the consequence of businesses investing significant amounts of money in marketing and formalizing brand strategy in order to place their goods in our minds in a distinctive way. In its most basic form, branding is the effort to develop a distinctive personality that distinguishes and identifies a good, a service, or an organization. It is simple to overlook the occasionally incredibly intricate series of events that led to us, the end user, holding the produced good in our hands while calmly chewing gum, listening to our digital music, driving our car, or reading our newspaper.
The chewing gum base’s dissolved particles are separated using a centrifuge. The Enterprise Resource Planning system used by the ball bearing manufacturer whose bearings are used in the gearboxes of our cars, the truck driving pulpwood used in the newsprint of our daily paper, or the hydrochloric acid used for refining silicates to produce silicon dioxide for use in the internal circuit boards of our music player are rarely given any significant afterthought by us, the consumer. This series of actions that results in the improvement of a straightforward product like chewing gum (referred to as the value chain in academics) is in fact more complex than one may initially believe.
We can all agree that Wrigley’s, iPod, Toyota, and the Washington Post are well-known brands that took a lot of work to develop, but what about the makers of centrifuges, hydrochloric acid, IT firms who offer ERP systems, or truck dealers? Do they also invest a lot of money into getting their brand in front of potential customers’ minds? An industrial firm that sells to other enterprises operates in a distinct environment, and as a result, the rules also alter. While a single package of chewing gum is sometimes purchased for less than $1 by the end user, the producer of chewing gum spends a lot of money researching, acquiring, and customizing the centrifuges used in their manufacturing process. When choosing which chewing gum brand to buy with his money, the end user faces degrees of risk that are far greater than those linked with this purchase. The maker of the centrifuge may have a competitive advantage in value-adding tasks like after-sales assistance or on-site maintenance by establishing a reputation as a reliable, long-term partner.
In a business-to-business scenario, risk, value, and trust are essential building pieces of the brand construct. Brands could actively manage risk and communicate to consumers that there is less danger by not just selling things but also guaranteeing their functionality, providing “100% up-time,” and offering lease arrangements. This enhances the value that the client receives while simultaneously reducing the perceived risk by the customer.
