Brand Impression

Having the best product doesn’t always guarantee market success. I have seen several products like the betamax that were probably better than the competition but were either marketed incorrectly, underfunded, or consumers had preconceived notion about the company, and avoided it on on those grounds.

In searching the internet over the weekend I found an interesting site that explores this last issue of consumer brand perception. BrandTags.net collects information from users about what words come to mind when certain brands are shown. This is a rorschach test of sorts for branding. Browsing deeper into the site you can see the results of this collection. Here are a few examples of what people think of these major brands:

I don’t mean to imply that an impression of a company today will follow the company forever, or that in all cases the consumer’s impression always matters- sometimes there isn’t any better alternatives. A company though will loose some of its competitive advantage if consumers come to hate the company so much that they are willing to be inconvenienced financially or otherwise by buying an alternative product.