Supichaya Sunthornjittanon(Britney)
Portland State University
Thesis statement: Reputation and design are two main reasons why consumers decide to buy brand name products
Reputation is one of the most important reasons why people purchase a specific product. When consumers buy products, they usually see what company those products come from. Consumers would check for the product origins before they buy them. Then, if they think the company has a good reputation and they have heard about the brand before, most of the time they will buy that product. As stated in “Brand Durability Challenged” (2011) people usually feel connected with and loyalty to the brands that have been in the market for many years. “Credibility, quality and consistency” (Makovsky, 2011) of the old brand can build consumer loyalty. The connection between people and brands might be the reason why most people usually buy the same thing over and over. This idea can be related to Kivial(2007)’s idea that people usually buy things that they know about because they feel safe and comfortable with, and they think those products are good. According to Westlund (2010), it has been discovered that more than half of the consumers who participated in the latest consumer survey decided what brands to buy at the store. If there are two products with same prices, they often choose the one with a brand because many people use it. To illustrate, Kiviat (2007) reports that a study by Stanford University found that when the exact same food was given to children-the only difference being the container in which it was served-, most of the children said that the food that was in McDonald’s packaging tasted better. In other words, people have a mind-set that products with brands have better quality than those without brands. On the other hand, according to the article “Are you wasting money on brand names” Consumer Reports has done a survey and