13 Ways To Differentiate Commodities - Branding Strategy Insider (2024)

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13 Ways To Differentiate Commodities - Branding Strategy Insider? ›

Differentiating a commodity is all about the experience. Create a memorable brand experience and the fact the your core product is like all the others becomes irrelevant. Aspirations are your friend. People shop for utility, and they buy because they want to be transformed.

Differentiating a commodity is all about the experience. Create a memorable brand experience and the fact the your core product is like all the others becomes irrelevant. Aspirations are your friend. People shop for utility, and they buy because they want to be transformed.

Think about it this way: an apple is a commodity, you can buy an apple anywhere, at the mom & pop's shop on the corner, at Vons, Ralph's and so on. You decide to buy an apple based on price. Apple, on the other hand, is a brand. You decide to buy an Apple device not based on price but despite the price.

While the primary aim of brand differentiation is to highlight a brand's unique aspects, its effective implementation can also significantly enhance customer retention, reduce acquisition costs, and foster brand loyalty, indirectly supporting the brand's growth and success.

Commodity branding is often used for products such as agricultural goods, raw materials, and basic industrial supplies. For example, a brand of coffee may use commodity branding to differentiate itself from other coffee brands by emphasizing the quality of the beans used or the unique roasting process.

The elements of differentiation include product design, marketing, packaging, and pricing. A product differentiation strategy should demonstrate that a product has all the features of competing choices but with additional exclusive benefits no one else offers.

Differentiated marketing, or segmented marketing, is an approach to marketing that appeals to a niche market or different types of customers. A strategy of differentiated marketing would create different marketing campaigns to optimize brand awareness for the various customer bases of your target audience.

Ownership. There is a difference, in terms of ownership, between a product versus a service. A product can be bought, used and then resold 'second-hand', while a service cannot – once it's been consumed. A product is also a separate entity to the business who creates/sells it.

Brand differentiation is an essential aspect of a brand marketing strategy. It enables companies to reveal their profitable qualities that help develop a unique selling proposition. This way, they understand their competitive advantage and stand out among competitors.

A differentiation strategy allows a company to compete in the market with something other than lower prices. For example, a candy company may differentiate its candy by improving the taste or using healthier ingredients.

How do you distinguish between a branded product and a commodity? ›

Commodities are goods that can be purchased everywhere for the same price because they cannot be differentiated from one another. On the other hand, products can be differentiated to add value; as a result, they can be branded and promoted to be sold at various prices based on the differences in quality.

The commodities to which the Strategy may have direct or indirect exposure may include, without limitation, industrial metals; oil, gas and other energy commodities; agricultural products; and livestock.

Commodities are often split into two broad categories: hard and soft commodities. Hard commodities include natural resources that must be mined or extracted, such as gold, rubber, and oil, while soft commodities are agricultural products or livestock, such as corn, wheat, coffee, sugar, soybeans, and pork.

In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them.

Commodities include agricultural products such as wheat and cattle, energy products such as oil and natural gas, and metals such as gold, silver and aluminum. There are also “soft” commodities, or those that cannot be stored forlong periods of time, which include sugar, cotton, cocoa and coffee.

Both fundamental and technical analysis are used to study commodity markets. Fundamentals, or supply/demand factors, tend to provide underlying reason to the market. Technical analysis is used to provide an indication of price trend, and an estimate of the timing and magnitude of price change.