Selling to professional buyers involves emotion, trust and recognition – love it or hate it, branding is imperative.
The shift from products to brands started in the 1950s, when consumer packaged goods firms noticed the quality of their competitors’ goods improving. In terms of how things worked, the playing field was levelling out. The answer was to add emotional value to the functional.
A brand perceived to offer superior value to its competitors could charge more; if this brand ‘premium’ was greater than the associated cost of building and maintaining that brand, the investment was justified.
