Establishing a brand on the market is the true art of marketing. It’s not the product being consumed, but rather the image one has of it. Building a brand is not simply giving a product a name, but also creating an experience. This means keeping in mind the contact people have with the brand. A brand is a name, but when the brand is powerful, it makes a person think of much more.
The public establishes its preferences with the brand in mind. The brand is the business. We have a great brand awareness that can be built through sponsorships. Making a brand strong requires more than advertising. Brands represent more than the product: they represent a configuration of services, values, and promises made by the seller.
If consumers bought products without caring about services, and all products and benefits were the same, markets would be based exclusively on price. In that case, all companies would have to accept the price the market sets, and only the company with the lowest price would win.

Price, quality, and brand prestige

Companies can always specialize in manufacturing the most sophisticated version of the product and charge a high price to cover their costs. That way the items will be luxury products with superior quality, terms, durability, and style. Oftentimes the price surpasses the real increase in quality. This sophisticated version of the product can exist as long as there are buyers who want to sustain the efforts of the products, aware of the superior quality. In almost all categories of products and services, there are one or more sellers who offer the best. There are very costly restaurants, hotels, and cafés. Sometimes it’s surprising when a new competitor emerges and establishes a very high price. One example would be Haagen-Dazs, which promoted itself as a high-quality ice cream brand, at a price no other ice-cream brand had charged before.

"Brands represent more than the product: they represent a configuration of services, values, and promises made by the seller"

There are companies that have been able to compete with the brand, introducing a comparable product in terms of quality and performance, but at a much lower price. Toyota introduced a new model, Lexus, with the positioning of “more for the same price”. It proved the high quality of its new Lexus in several ways: through journalists’ comments in newspapers and magazines, through the distribution of a video in which it compared Lexus and Mercedes. It also showed that the purchasing experience at Lexus dealers was better than that of Mercedes.

Different positioning strategies

Many people complain that some manufacturers provide more than they ask for, yet they still pay the highest price. The most successful value positioning would be to offer customers and potential buyers “more for less”. This is the draw of the successful discount stores. One example would be the toy store Toys’R’Us, which offers the largest selection of toys at the lowest price.
In short, each brand should adopt a value positioning strategy aimed at its target market. The proposal of “more for more” will attract one target market, while “less for much less” will attract another. The only value positioning that will fail is “less for more”. Consumers feel cheated, they tell others, and the brand quickly disappears from the market.