Brand Names versus Generic, what motivates people to buy?

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Why and under what conditions are people more likely to buy brand names rather than their generic counterparts?

Introduction

You think you are having Kellogg's for breakfast, catching the news on CNN, driving to Texaco to fill up your Ford while listening to Kiss 100. You ponder changing to diet Pepsi like Madonna. You arrive at work and curse Microsoft for the blue screen. But that was not what really happened. You were actually buying a life, getting deeply connected to cars and cold drink. Your experiences took place on an elevated plane, one made of dreams and wishes. Warner Brothers creates your reality, Adidas promotes it, and Picasso illustrates it.

'The mind of which we are unaware is aware of us.' R.D. Laing

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

To better understand the phenomena of branding, I have explored Abraham Maslow's (1954) popular theory of human motivation. Maslow's hierarchy of human needs include deficiency and growth needs. Within the deficiency needs, each lower need must be met before moving to the next level and if in future a deficiency is detected, the individual will act to remove the deficiency. Deficiency needs in order of power are physiological, safety, love and self-esteem, followed by growth needs, cognitive, aesthetic and self-actualization. Branding implies that buying the brand will satisfy a subconscious desire. A psychological appeal is a visual or aural influence on your subconscious mind and emotions. These psychological appeals take advantage of the effect of millions of years of evolution on our minds and behavior, and that behavior is to buy. I have classified this essay according to Maslow's hierarchy, but only as a framework to expand other related psychological aspects, as it been criticized for being socio-politically insensitive. (Bulhan 1993)

Physiological

Brands unconsciously advocate that buying the brand can improve your chance at meeting physiological needs, concurred by Dichter's (1960) motivation research. Physiological needs are instinctive and they influence our mental responses and resulting behaviors to stimuli, even if we 'think' our reactions are conscious. People buy brands because brands satisfy their utilitarian value and provide enjoyment, i.e. brands enable people to affect and control the environment (Prentice 1987). A brand only has to show an attractive model and imply that he or she is attracted to the kind of person who uses the brand.

Maslow said, 'a feeling which, if left unsatisfied, produces anxiety or tension ... yet if satisfied, imparts a sensation of well-being'. Needs manifest as feelings. Feelings inform us of differences between how we want and how we do feel. The more the contrast, the stronger the motivation. Brands relate to humanness and uniqueness by helping us solve problems. Brands placate our negative feelings stemming from needs and support our feeling and thinking self through the decision-making process. We buy brands because we feel the brand understands us, not because we understand the brand.

Branding also exploits conditioning. B.F. Skinner's operant conditioning suggests that learning results from our responses to events in the environment. A response produces a consequence. We become conditioned to respond when a particular Stimulus-Response pattern is reinforced. A reinforcer is anything that strengthens the desired response, like verbal praise or a feeling of satisfaction. Classical conditioning is found in many beer ads which prominently feature attractive women. The women naturally elicit a favorable, mildly aroused feeling in most men. The beer is associated with this effect.

Security

The security need is a strong motivator to avoid doing certain things. Some fears include rejection or not fitting in, i.e. not using a brand everyone else uses. It is also the preference for the familiar rather than the unknown. Hence brands ensure the same set of values is adhered to with consistency. Consistency means security.

Branding takes place in a competitive environment, and persuades people to prefer the brand to competition. Global brands can provide relevant meaning and experience to people across multiple societies. 'In technocratic and colorless times, brands bring warmth, familiarity and trust,' says Peter Brabeck, boss of Nestlé.

Love and the need to belong

After safety needs are met, the urge for love and a feeling of belonging emerge. Brands have a cultish quality that satisfies this need. People empathize with characters that experience positive results from using a product, i.e. Head 'n' Shoulders.

Humans are inherently social and the most powerful information source for consumers are people to whom they look as a basis of self-appraisal. Group influence is determined by reference groups. The aspirational reference groups are those against who you compare yourself. Associative reference groups realistically represent your current equals. The dissociative reference groups are people you don't want to be like. Brands assign us to our ideal groups.

Esteem and recognition

We all need to feel important and worthwhile. This is the need for self esteem. 'If you can tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I can tell you what you are.' (Dale Carnegie) Everybody acquires an image of themselves, partly from our interactions with others. Research shows that the self-concept is perhaps the basis for all motivated behavior (Franken 1994). We develop and maintain our self-concept by acting and then reflecting on what we have done or can do, what others tell us about what we have done in comparison to our and others expectations and accomplishments. By using the brand, brand characteristics extend to us and we attain an image.

Social constructionism explains the symbolic function of possessions. Possessions are socially shared symbols of identity (Dittmar, 1992). We become creators, transmitters and recipients of the meaning of objects. The 'symbolic consumption' perspective proposes people don't just consume actual brands, but also or instead, consume their symbolic meanings. Research (Powderly and MacNulty 1990) identified needs for appearances and materialism are increasing.

By communicating identity, you and the brand connect and form a relationship (Belk, 1988). During the last century, in developed countries, there has been an increasing shift from buying to satisfy physiological needs towards buying as postmodern means of acquiring and expressing self-identity (Lunt and Livingstone, 1992). People buy and relate to brands in ways that fit their preferred self-image. "When I turned 50, my last kid left home, the cat died and I got me a Harley. I got me a life!" says Dianne Colwell, 61, a retiree from Daytona Beach, "It appeals to the wild side in all of us. I am a woman -- watch me roar!"

Charles Horton Cooley's theory of the looking glass self, postulates that we are who we are because of our perceptions of how others view and judge us and our response to their judgments. A brand is a collection of perceptions in the consumer's mind. (Buildingbrands) This definition illustrates that brands are very different from their generic counterparts. Brands are intangible. They positively influence people's perceptions.

Fromm's theory describes authoritarianism, who fuse themselves with others, i.e. within a brand name. We escape our separate identity by becoming like everyone else, eliminating the need to acknowledge our freedom, feel alone or take responsibility. Research illustrates people often use television to learn about desired lifestyles (O'Quinn and Shrum 1997). We try to imitate stereotypes by consuming similar brands (Dittmar 1994). We gain self-esteem from imitating the appearance, behavior and adopting the possessions of persons we admire. This supports Albert Bandura's observational learning theory, which assumes learning occurs through observing others. Fromm also proposes that the orientation of the modern industrial society is that success is a matter of how well I can sell, package and advertise myself. The surface is everything and branding represents the surface! Wicklund and Gollwitzer (1982) explain via symbolic self-completion, that people acquire and display possessions to compensate for perceived shortcomings in their self-concept.

Brands are the accessories needed to play various roles (Goffman, 1959), because they boost or give definition to self concepts (Solomon, 1983). People also express a need for uniqueness (Snyder and Fromkin 1977), which is an outcome of the social comparison process (Festinger 1954) and is satisfied by the inherent scarcity of some brands.

Branding's growth in the last century, has had a profound impact on people needs, the comparisons they make and how they identify with others.

Cognitive - knowledge & understanding

People selectively perceive what they want and it affects how people see risks in a purchase. We want to maintain consistency between our beliefs and our practices, even if it conflicts with reality. Brand names are the most prized means of avoiding perceived risk (Roselius 1971).

Internal search involves scanning your memory to recall previous experiences concerning solutions, sufficient for frequently purchased brands. Today we are bombarded with more information than we can process. Each brand represents a chunk of information, which is constructed by people to avoid explicit multiple attributes of each brand on purchase occasions (Peter and Olsen, 1994). Brands guide us through a variety of competitive products and help people reach better, quicker decisions, providing simplicity and reassurance. Brands come in varying quality ranges, though late-twentieth-century people take consistent quality for granted. We choose the quality level that suits our budget and needs. When offered a choice, respondents chose brand name first and price second. (Jacoby et.al. 1971; 1977) Research was conducted in the U.S. and involved mostly convenience goods.

Anything you learn becomes a part of the vast neuronal associations in the brain. When you learn that Kentucky is finger licking good or Nike evokes a positive reaction, your brain ties these concepts together into a neural association in your brain that gradually develops neural pathways to make your 'practicing' automatic. Neural pathways assist in quickly selecting products or services and avoiding perceived risk. Each link in long term memory creates new means of accessing information. The more associations the brand has, the better we recognize the brand (Keller, 1993). The associations between a brand, its heritage and values increases accessibility and recall of the brand and identifies the uniqueness of the brand.

Gestalts are learned patterns of response that become compelling, involuntary and rigid. Attitudes are learned predispositions to respond to situation(s) in a consistently favorable or unfavorable way. Brand loyalty is habitual, connected to gestalt learning. A favorable attitude and continuous acquisition of a brand progresses over time. Brands become an attitude, which can become gestalt.

'Our intelligence is imperfect, and newly arisen; the ease with which it can be sweet-talked, overwhelmed, or subverted by other hardwired propensities, sometimes themselves disguised as the cool light of reason, is worrisome.' (Sagan and Druyan, 1992). The subconscious appeals of branding can be countered by our intelligence, if we are aware of them, where they come from and how they work.

Aesthetic

Personal matters such as aesthetic taste and sensory emotion may also independently encourage consumption. Research has continually identified the emotional responses associated with brands, such as sensory pleasure, aesthetic beauty, or excitement (Alleres 1990). BMW's slogan for years has been 'Sheer Driving Pleasure'.

Self actualization

Self-actualization is the need to be all that you can be. Motives are the reasons for behavior, as we move towards our primary goal of feeling well. If a need is threatened or unsatisfied, wants emerge. Wants are our conscious expression of our striving to meet unconscious needs, which may or may not be conscious until they become specific problems. Brands provide solutions that satisfy our needs.

Carl Rogers theory suggests the actualizing tendency, the need to make the very best of our existence. Growing up, our peers and the media lead us astray with conditions of worth. They only give us what we need when we are 'worthy' and we therefore like ourselves only if we meet their standards, rather than actualizing our potential. Branding targets wanna-be's, who rather conform than face exclusion or ridicule; brands therefore are the standard of the masses. Does branding have a negative impact on the self?

Alfred Adler's theory, proposes a single motivation behind all behavior and experience; striving for perfection. Motivation involves moving towards the future, towards our goals and ideals, superficially personified via brands, rather than being driven by the past.

Beliefs, involve stories whose interpretation can give people insight into how they should feel, think and behave. Coca-Cola is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, if it doesn't value its customers, it will fail. Brands don't challenge your own personal god. In the developed world, some feel brands have expanded into the void left by the decline of organized religion. Brands have become a lifestyle, characterized by opinions, self-concept, motives, attitudes and personality, that tie them to everyday life. We have become more actively involved in the brand creation process, i.e. the ATM machine. This interaction strengthens the relationship that we feel with the brand. It is generally very difficult to change strongly held beliefs, even if inaccurate.

Value systems differentiate right feelings, thoughts and behavior from wrong ones and exist independently of formal belief systems. That could be its appeal. Implicit within the images and the lifestyle that brands portray, they involve a value system that is packaged for consumption.

Personality makes people prefer brands, explained by Carl Jung's work. Some brands appeal to our rational part (thinking), such as toothpaste which prevents decay. Others appeal to the senses, such as fashion. Some brands attract our emotional part, evoking feelings of affection and belonging. Some people intuitively feel comfortable with some brands, experiencing them as an extension of themselves, i.e. the Body Shop, with its environmental approach. Jung's theory suggests a collective unconscious, which indirectly influences all of our experiences, especially emotional ones. Examples of archetypes, which are part of the collective unconscious, are the immediate recognition of certain symbols (brand logos) and the meanings of certain myths. Brands harness the myth behind these meanings and enter the personal space of the consumer where they enhance, complement or transform our world. This explains the tendency of people to seek fulfillment of higher needs by means of products traditionally associated with lower needs. Brand personalities create a strong bond with people, i.e. Joe Camel.

Conclusion

But brands aren't as powerful as alleged, nor is the public as easily manipulated. Many established brands are in danger, losing customer loyalty. (Tom Barnes, Brands in Crisis) People have become increasingly unreliable. Every age group is relatively equally capricious. Brands are making more noise out of desperation. In the developed world, people are becoming closer to self-actualization, as deficiency needs are met and we move beyond them. Some traits consistently found in Maslow's self-actualizing subjects were that they see through phoniness, deception, and 'games' and avoid them, such as branding ploys. They cope with problems, rather than avoid them or find an answer in brand names. They accept themselves and others. Who you are is different from the brand you choose. They resent unfairness caused by social roles and prejudice, on which branding relies. They think for themselves, even in the face of social criticism. As humanity moves closer to self actualization, we will eventually disregard branding. But until then, as I have explained in this essay, branding will continue to influence the majority of lives significantly.

'Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.' Ludwig Borne.

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