What’s in A Name, a Look at Brand Loyalty

Posted on July 31, 2007, under Tools and Services.

A recent fiasco with a new grill purchase, really gave me a different perspective about brand names and their value. I know you must be asking; what the heck does a grill have anything to do with technology. Well it’s not entirely unrelated, brand loyalty exists in every market.

Back in May I purchase a Model 463268107 Char-Broil grill to replace my old broken down grill from a past life. I paid around $370 at Lowes for it. In doing my research for Grills I looked at Weber grills but the price for the features that I wanted were a good double what others were charging. I like Webers, have used Webers, and know they are quality but just could not bring myself to pay $650 for a grill. When I got my new Char-Broil grill home, and went through the painful installation all was good for about a week. After a week were were hearing a very loud and annoying noise coming from the gas regulator. Back to Lowes I went, and they offered to replace that part. After a week with the new part, here comes the noise again. Back to Lowes… they brought out a new Grill and took away the old Grill. A week later, the noise is back on a brand new Grill! After that the money was no longer worth it. I gladly went out and paid more for a Weber grill, and got the EP-320 paying around $650 all together. The assembly on this grill was much easier, Weber though of everything down to the packaging. The grill is much sturdier and you can tell made of quality parts. Weber has long been a brand name of grills, and Char-Broil is becoming a house-hold name so I was surprised at my experience with my Char-Broil. I recently found out that the reason the noise was being created on the Char-Broil was because you has not enough gas going through the grill. If you have all four burners and the side burner on, it would make this noise. To me, it’s not unreasonable to use the grill in that manner; but Char-Broil has seen reports of this in some situations. With my new Weber I can use all burners and the side burner with no problem, and I got the Weber up to 500 degrees where my Char-Broil never got hotter than 350. So something that Weber is doing with gas regulation and heat dissipation is much different than the competition, and I went from not wanting to shell out %650 for a grill to gladly paying that much because I had a bad experience with a lesser brand.

Before this experience, as many Americans, I would bargain shop and would only by brand names for things that have no equal replacement. The grocery store is a big market for bargain products, and I would buy generic butter, cheese, etc. To lower the grocer bill and because I can not tell the difference.

In relating this to technology I found that I do this to a certain extent with software, as do my friends, and companies I have worked for. Sometimes to search for the cheapest and fastest solution beats out the solution that is more expensive and longer setup investment, but might be a more reliable solution. This also plays into the open source vs. proprietary debate.

You can also think about it from Lowes perspective. They really lose out because now they have two used grills they have to send back to Char-Broil and if you add up the initial stock investment and the extra work they had to do to replace those grills , they are probably eating the cost; I got all my money back. As for Char-Broil well they eat some of that cost, but they now have one less customer because one summer they had a grill model that had a serious flaw in the engineering. It only takes one experience like this for me to never buy from this company again, there are too many options for customers. That, and the fact that I will not have to buy a grill for another 7-10 years if the Weber stands up like it promises, even then I could probably just replace certain parts to keep it up and running.

Where do you cut corners in purchasing generic vs. brand name?

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2 Replies to "What’s in A Name, a Look at Brand Loyalty"

Steve Brewer on July 31, 2007

Same thing applies to retail stores. I just purchased a hub - I paid $10 more on Amazon, but I knew it would show up in two days, I know it will be what I ordered, and I know I can return it if it doesn’t work.