Mind Over Marketing

Brand battles occur in every industry and in practically every product category. They consume significant managerial attention and consist of far more than marketing tactics — they are ultimately about winning customers’ cognitive resources. Brands make it easier for consumers to find the products they want and need. They also make markets more efficient by bringing buyers and sellers together at a lower cost than would otherwise be possible. In fact, the loss of a brand would often be more harmful to a company’s ability to continue business operations than the loss of its upstream assets. Consumers’ attention is finite, but available information is increasingly abundant, which gives rise to a principle of scarcity that makes brands particularly valuable. Moreover, cognitive economy states that because information-processing capacity is finite, customers often trade off accuracy of results and optimal outcomes for what is most accessible. This partly explains the high failure rate of new, novel products — and why Lexar, when it introduced memory cards for digital cameras, wisely packaged them in gold packages similar to those used for Kodak film. As this article shows, the battle between brands takes place inside the minds of consumers.