by Eko Prasetyo @ 11:22 AM
I've been reading a book, which can be translated to english as "Hermawan Kertajaya on Brand" (Hermawan Kertajaya is one of the top ten marketing expert in the world). It give me insight that everybody can brand themselves, even only to heighten his or her value in front of in-laws prospective.
He also wrote that people sometimes are expected to pay premium prices to brand that can attach itself to the mind and soul of people. Brands that can make people do that can reap up profits that are as high as possible without telling people what is the real quality of the products they have.
For instance, Intel is more popular than AMD, but it's price/performance ratio is bigger than AMD, which rationally is not a smart choice for buyers. Not to mention that Intel have been forcing consumers to upgrade to things that they don't really need. It's current motherboard models are PCI Express+LGA775+BTX only, forcing people to upgrade to all new systems, which hopefully are Intel Pentium XXX processors plugged to an Intel Desktop Board.
On the Graphic Cards world, nVidia is relying on technoly that takes people 2-3 years to fully enjoy, which is Pixel Shader 3.0. nVidia's products, like Intel's , also need more power supply and emit more heat than their opponents, namely ATi and AMD.
And I understand lately that companies around the world relies more and more to unreal assets, such as stock prices, images, reputations, and absurd numbers of products people they expect to buy.
A perfect example would be Nokia. They launched 7260 models, which is a middle products priced at middle-high price because it's design is claimed to be fashionable. They also launched the "fashionale" 7610 and it's twin 6670. Both the same products, only different in softwares inside them.
Take also 3660 and 6600, same internal capabilities with different casings and softwares inside.
Hermawan also said that when more companies are relying on intangible (unreal) assets, the world's economy is getting more and more fragile by the days.
Take a look at Enron, Worldcom, and Andersen Consultings. They all lost reputations, lost premium stock prices, and finally lost themselves. That's because their main assets, the intangible assets, had slipped off their hands.
Beware, consumers. Educate yourselves on things you'd like to buy, before you buy something that is heavily factored in intangible things, such as fashionalne feelings.
