Brands you feel you have an attachment to

[Pink Jazz]

I was wondering, if you feel you have an attachment to certain particular brands, which ones do you think they would be?

Here is my list:

   
• Boeing (airplanes)
• New Flyer (transit buses)
• IZOD (clothing)
• Amazon (shopping)
• HP (laptops)
• Samsung (cell phones)
• Moen (plumbing fixtures)
• Fulton Homes (Arizona homebuilder)

[hbelkins]

Adidas. I've primarily worn them since I was in high school. They've always felt more comfortable to me than Nike, Converse, or other "tennis shoe" brands.

General Motors, until they became "Government Motors." Now, I'd probably buy whatever was most affordable, even if it ended up being a Ford.

Coke (particularly Diet Coke) over Pepsi.

Fischer's for lunch meat (hot dogs, bologna, ham and cheese loaf). It's just better than Field's, Oscar Mayer, or other brands.

[ozarkman417]

   
• HP (laptops)

The same applied to me until I started to build my own computers (I bought both laptops & desktops from HP). The ability to pick-and-choose my own parts is a huge advantage. Additionally, I can easily upgrade the parts when I want to. I built a $1000 computer a year-and-a-half ago (during the heat of the bitcoin rush).

[Max Rockatansky]

The domestic automakers since I have family that worked for each of them.  At the very least it's nice to be able line the pockets of a relative who is drawing pension. Granted, I just bought a Subaru lately so brand loyalty isn't as strong as it used to be.  For some reason Nike has always made running shoes that are wide enough to fit my feet comfortably, it's been a solid decade since I've bought another brand. 

[texaskdog]

Coke.  Never cared for Pepsi, inferior brand.
Hostess.  Love those cakes, was so sad when they closed temporarily.

[Pink Jazz]

   
• HP (laptops)

The same applied to me until I started to build my own computers (I bought both laptops & desktops from HP). The ability to pick-and-choose my own parts is a huge advantage. Additionally, I can easily upgrade the parts when I want to. I built a $1000 computer a year-and-a-half ago (during the heat of the bitcoin rush).

I usually build my own desktops, but for laptops I usually buy HP.

[Beltway]

Buick -- my last 4 cars
Diet Coke
Diet Mountain Dew
New Balance shoes
Wendy's
Food Lion

[dlsterner]

New Balance - I have very wide feet (11EEEE) (my ex-GF called them "Fred Flintstone feet"), and I can always find my size with NB.
Wrangler - their jeans just seem to fit me better than other brands.
Coke - I find Pepsi is too sweet for my taste.  (I have passed taste tests given by friends who didn't believe I could tell the difference).
Krispy Kreme - To me, much better than Dunkin'.
Roy Rogers - To me, their roast beef sandwich is better than any other fast food option.

I'm sure there's more

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I mean none of these things are "I won't ever deviate from these" but when available

Kwik Trip
Cracker Barrel
Village Inn
Perkins
Waffle House
Cub Foods
Target

[DaBigE]

Interesting topic...I've often thought about creating my preferred brands list but never had the motivation

Cars - up until our last two, I wouldn't have batted an eye and said Ford. They're going to have an uphill battle winning my wallet for the next vehicle. I know it won't be a Chevy (or any GM derivative) or a "Dodge".
Medium-duty trucks - International (until they got into bed with GM)
HD trucks - Oshkosh
School buses - Blue Bird
Municipal buses - New Flyer
Fire apparatus - Pierce, Seagrave
Ambulances - Braun
Motorcycles - Harley-Davidson
Bikes - Trek
Gas stations, car wash - Kwik Trip
Traffic signals - Eagle
Street lights - GE
Railroad signals - WC Hayes
Outdoor sirens - Federal Signal (civil defense and fire apparatus)
Die-cast - Matchbox
PCs - HP. Ten years ago, I would have said Dell, but HP allows for more user choice in what goes inside.
Keyboards & mice (trackball in my case) - Logitech
Calculators - Texas Instruments
TVs - Samsung
Mobile phones - Samsung, Motorola
Cameras - Canon
Automatic doors - Stanley
Door closers - LCN
Locks - Schlage
Elevators - Otis
Plumbing fixtures - Kohler
Shoes & sports apparel - Nike (I've tried other brands, but they don't seem to hold up as well)
TP - Angel Soft
Tissue - Puffs, I used to be a Kleenex person, but Puffs invented/perfected the lotion tissue and has a much easier box to pull JUST 1 tissue out of)
Beer - Miller, New Glarus
Soda - Coke, Sprecher
Tools - Husky (was Craftsman until they stopped innovating, started circling the drain)
Big box retail - Meijer
Food store - Woodmans
Drums - Pearl
Cymbals - Zildjian
Bells - Meneely
Pipe Organs - Aeolian-Skinner, Schantz

[texaskdog]

I'll add Walmart over Target.  All the ghetto folks in my neighborhood avoid Target but are always in the Walmart a block away but that's my store.  Granted no one knows anything but they have tons of things I want, I just sold a $25 Target gift card for $20, couldn't find anything I wanted, and I hate being called a guest.

[hbelkins]

How could I forget?

Sheetz.

Sheetz > Wawa.

[kphoger]

Drum heads - Remo

[KEVIN_224]

I was always loyal to Sony as a teen. My portable cassette radio and headphones (and later Walkmans) were always from them. I never owned a Sony TV though.

I always preferred Coca-Cola over Pepsi. Still do, actually.

AFC over the NFC with NFL football (but rooting for Seattle in the playoffs right now).

American League over the National League with baseball.

[ET21]

Coke for my go-to soft drink
Microsoft with my family's 1st computer (then Gateway) and now my Xbox One
Shell for my gas station
Mobile phone would have to be Motorola, although Samsung has started to come in.
Vienna Beef for hot dogs, relish, and corned beef locally for the Chicagoland area, a must for cooking

[Scott5114]

I'm about to ruin this entire thread.

Since I own a business, I had an opportunity to take a free marketing class that was hosted by the Chickasaw Nation. And it blew my mind, because it made me realize how much the concept of a brand is absolute bullshit.

Basically how it works, is a company is trying to sell a product. So they come up with an idea of the sort of person who they feel would be a good fit for that product. Like, let's say, men 18 to 35 that live in Arizona. Then they study ways to manipulate that sort of person into buying the product. One tool for doing this is the Pyramid of Value:



This thing is brilliantly simple, and it's stupid how consistently it works. The higher up the pyramid you go, the further away you are from talking about the product itself and more toward playing mind games with the customer–which makes you more money than just talking about how great your product is! Have a copy of it pulled up the next time you're watching TV and the commercials come on and play Marketing Bullshit Bingo. It's very satisfying.

Here's a great example: Apple products. They play hard on those middle two levels of the pyramid. The design and aesthetics. The affiliation and belonging. That if you use an Apple product you're somehow more hip and stylish than someone with a cheaper phone. None of it is true, really. The case materials and chips and circuit boards are the same stuff you find in an Android phone. But Apple can charge more because of the emotional response they've engineered to the Apple brand. Very clever.

So what do you do if you have a product that would appeal to two different types of customer? Why, it's simple, you just make a new brand and stick it on the same product so you can target the other type of person. Maybe change a few of the details to make it less obvious. Car manufacturers have been doing this for decades, of course. It's why GM doesn't brand everything a Chevrolet, or why Lincolns exist. Every so often they realize one of the brands isn't appealing to the target customer anymore, or the target customer doesn't exist anymore, so the brand goes away. Poof, no more Pontiac, but GM is still in business.

The more you look into this sort of stuff, the more money you save, because you start to catch on to the tricks the marketing is doing, and you start to think "Why do I have an attachment to this brand? Is it because of something I really like about it, or is it because the marketing department is trying to make me feel that way?"

[hotdogPi]

Here's a great example: Apple products. They play hard on those middle two levels of the pyramid. The design and aesthetics. The affiliation and belonging. That if you use an Apple product you're somehow more hip and stylish than someone with a cheaper phone. None of it is true, really. The case materials and chips and circuit boards are the same stuff you find in an Android phone. But Apple can charge more because of the emotional response they've engineered to the Apple brand. Very clever.

I use a Mac, and I've had my data since I started using a laptop in late 2010 without losing anything at all. Remember about a year ago the "Windows 10 automatic updates" thread?

While Linux (which you use) is superior to both Microsoft and Apple if you know what you're doing, not everyone knows how to use a command line effectively.

[NE2]

I have a nonconsensual attachment to capitalism.

[hbelkins]

Here's a great example: Apple products. They play hard on those middle two levels of the pyramid. The design and aesthetics. The affiliation and belonging. That if you use an Apple product you're somehow more hip and stylish than someone with a cheaper phone. None of it is true, really. The case materials and chips and circuit boards are the same stuff you find in an Android phone. But Apple can charge more because of the emotional response they've engineered to the Apple brand. Very clever.

I use a Mac, and I've had my data since I started using a laptop in late 2010 without losing anything at all. Remember about a year ago the "Windows 10 automatic updates" thread?

While Linux (which you use) is superior to both Microsoft and Apple if you know what you're doing, not everyone knows how to use a command line effectively.

Remember that Mac computers were originally targeted for the desktop publishing industry. My first introduction to a personal computer was in 1987, when I took a job at a newspaper that had converted to Macs for outputting news copy. Pagination was not yet a thing, so we printed out copy from laser printers on plain paper, ran it through a waxer, cut it out, and pasted it up the same way we used to do stuff that was printed from a Compugraphic phototypsetting machine. The up-front costs (computers, printers, etc.) were expensive, but plain paper was a lot cheaper to buy than phototypesetting film and chemicals for the processor -- and you didn't have the smelly chemicals you had to clean out every so often.

So, when it came time for me to buy a computer of my own a few years later, I bought a Mac. Not because I had any particular affinity for the brand, but because it was what I was used to, and I already had software and fonts I could install. More me, it was a preference for the operating system over any brand name. If I want a Windows computer, I don't care if it's a Lenovo, HP, Dell, or whatever.

And, therefore, I go with Apple for smartphones and tablets, because they were designed to interact with Mac computers. I've also become familiar with the iOS and prefer it to Android, although -- as I've said before -- I like Android's expandability through the use of SD cards, and the ease of installing software by not requiring the use of a proprietary store.

[Buck87]

Verizon
LG
Wendy's
New Balance
Rural King
Yuengling

[NWI_Irish96]

Southwest Airlines
Speedway Fuel
Marriott Hotels
Android OS
Waffle House
Four Roses Bourbon
Wendy's
Mozilla Firefox

[corco]

Horizon Airlines
Delta Airlines
McDonald's
Steak n Shake
Hewlett-Packard
Morton's Salt
Mobil 1 Oil and Oil Filters

[Scott5114]

So, when it came time for me to buy a computer of my own a few years later, I bought a Mac. Not because I had any particular affinity for the brand, but because it was what I was used to, and I already had software and fonts I could install. More me, it was a preference for the operating system over any brand name. If I want a Windows computer, I don't care if it's a Lenovo, HP, Dell, or whatever.

And, therefore, I go with Apple for smartphones and tablets, because they were designed to interact with Mac computers. I've also become familiar with the iOS and prefer it to Android, although -- as I've said before -- I like Android's expandability through the use of SD cards, and the ease of installing software by not requiring the use of a proprietary store.

So you make your decisions based on the bottom level of the pyramid, which is where the rational decisions tend to be made. That means you're probably not swayed as easily by marketing gimmicks that play to the upper levels of the pyramid, which tend to drive more impulsive, "I want this but I can't quite articulate why" sort of purchasing decisions.

But on the other hand...are the benefits Apple provides really worth the price premium they command over comparable non-Apple products? If not...that's marketing for you.

While Linux (which you use) is superior to both Microsoft and Apple if you know what you're doing, not everyone knows how to use a command line effectively.

I'd argue that the GUI on Linux has gotten superior to that of the other two as well, since Linux developers don't have a vested interest in getting you to buy more stuff with any given company. For example, in the major desktop environments, the start menu equivalent is broken down categorically (Administration, Games, Graphics, Internet, Office...) and then labeled primarily with function more prominent than program name ("Web Browser" with "Mozilla Firefox" in smaller type below it, or "Spreadsheet" with "LibreOffice Calc" below it) instead of categorization by software developer and then name (having a Microsoft Office folder that contains an entry for "Microsoft Excel" that presupposes you know what Excel is and does, training you to look under "M" for "Microsoft" instead of "O" for "Office", etc.)

Linux interfaces similarly seem to be immune to the 2010s trend of stripping out functionality in the name of making software "easier". The less-used options may be hidden under an "Advanced" button or tab, but they're all still there.

I'd also say that Linux is superior if you don't know what you're doing, because Linux will generally only ask for a root (administrator) password when you are about to do something you really shouldn't mess with unless you know what you're doing. Windows applications have a tendency to want admin permissions for the slightest things, which trains users into a mindset of "yes, yes, go away so I can do what I want" which can get them into trouble if they're not careful. With Linux, root permissions are needed rarely enough that providing them carries a degree of gravity to the decision that can deter users from proceeding if they're not confident about what they're doing.

[OracleUsr]

Dell (laptops--I just have always had good luck with their brand.  My wife has had a Lenovo which was a piece of c-word and two HP's, but I'm happy with Dell)
Canon (camera lenses...guess that's almost a given since I use a DSLR so it's either off-brand or buy a new camera)

[Scott5114]

I think this thread would be more interesting if people write out why they have an attachment to brands rather than barfing out a list of corporations.