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Brand Building - Hamam

Brands and Marketing Commodities
A commodity is a good or even a service whose widespread availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors other than price, such as brand name. By definition, commodities lack differentiation and the consequent ability to charge a price premium distinguishing them from strong brands. Brands also ensure repeat buying and publicity thus ensuring a predictable and grow-able share of the market based on their unique positioning strategy rather than based on just cost competition.

Even with commodities, there are quite a few parameters which brands can use to position themselves to capture a place in the consumer’s memory and consequently in their shopping basket. A few of the more widely accepted of them are: Consistency of Product Quality, Customization of the product to the extent possible, Providing a wider range of products, Identifying the most profit generating segments of the market and modifying or adding an offering to cater to their specific needs, Unique packaging, Emotional Branding and even basing branding on building a unique image to the extent of professing to have a brand personality. In fact focusing on getting consumers to build an emotional identification with the brand and its personality has a far longer lasting effect and builds far greater loyalty than focusing on just functional and utility attributes which a competitor would also able to easily match if not surpass.

Hamam is a typical example of such a strategy of building a strong brand image to appeal to the consumers. Hamam has captured the consumer’s mind space by building around itself an image of Honesty and Protection even while it is seen that the product itself offers scope for very little unique or differentiating features which would ensure that a consumer remains loyal to the brand because given the plethora of players in this market any new successful variant would be instantly taken up by the...