Competitive markets have low barrier of entry which allows new ambitious companies to easily become a brand name in their respective field. Ultimately, creating a brand product is what everyone wants in a today’s highly competitive market. But achieving this goal is like walking through a midfield. Not just the competition, but many external factors like legal boundaries and unethical competition are just some of the obstacles that may arise. One industry that is characterized with branding and ongoing battle between competitors is the fashion industry. Here we have an ongoing and interesting fight between designer brands and large chain store brands. For example, Ralph Lauren Perfume vs Adidas Perfume. However, we shouldn’t be fooled by designer names as most of these perfumes go through the same product development process as store brand products. It is the customer perception of these products that makes the difference.

Cost

When you’re having a dilemma between these two types of brands, cost will have major influence in your decision-making process. The perception can be very different, depending on how the customer understands price. Wise customers will understand that a Ralph Lauren product is not very different from a non-branded product and that the difference in price is the amount you pay for the name and designer’s logo. Other customers might look at things from a whole different perspective – wealthier customers might look at high price of designer brand products and translated it as better quality. That’s what good branding can achieve.

Quality

If we make an overall comparison between designer and store brand products, we would be deceiving you if we said that there is no difference in quality. Most designer brands put significance on what kind of material they use for production, trying to make sure that their customers will know that they are getting a quality product. However, we are talking about fashion clothing and apparel, so no matter how hard you try, you cannot make a cotton shirt that is way better in quality than any other cotton shirt. Thus, the difference in price between designer and store brand clothes symbolizes high quality of a product to a certain extent but mostly represents designer’s logo and name.

Marketing

Store brand products like Guess, H&M and others, use complex marketing strategies to achieve wholesale profits. Unlike these, designer branded clothes are usually sold exclusively and that is why they add more dollars to the price of a product. Nevertheless, because store brands sell cheaper products, in the battle with designers, they are forced to use international marketing strategies to generate larger sales and income.