Topic 11: Brand Names and Utility

Brand names have a huge effect on the utility that a person receive when consuming goods or services. People generally think that goods or services with brand names are better than those with no brand names. To me, it really depends on the product we are looking at. For foods and drinks, my demand curve for brand names and no-name are usually very close, because foods and drinks usually have not much difference on taste or quality, at least I cannot tell the difference. For example: Coke and Pepsi. Coke and Pepsi taste the same to me, so I would only buy the cheaper one. For electronic devices, I would prefer products with brand names more than no-name, because electronic product is a long-term used item. I want to make sure that it won't break that easily because electronics are usually expensive. For example: a random earphone and Beats. I would rather buy Beats because I can trust the quality of Beats, but not the random earphone. If all things being equal, such as quality and durability, I think a product having a brand name will not bring me more utility, because in this case, a cheaper product will bring me more utility than brand name.