3 ms·
> It’s a foreign concept for many of us who seek out the best product or deals for each purchase and will change brands in an instant if another company release
by vunderba 6mo ago
> It’s a foreign concept for many of us who seek out the best product or deals for each purchase and will change brands in an instant if another company releases a better product.
For those of us who grew up in the era of the "Are you a Mac or a PC" [1], many Americans are intimately familiar with the concept of brand identity.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_a_Mac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_a_Mac
- TulliusCicero 6mo agoThere are certain cases where brand attachment is stronger, but overall brand attachment in the US is pretty weak.
- wavemode 6mo agoMac, yes. But I feel like being a "PC user" was never a coherent social identity. People use PCs for various reasons, usually pragmatic. (Reflecting on it, I don't think I ever knew anyone who was "loyal" to Microsoft, or, dare I say, even particularly liked them as a company. At least certainly not the way people like Apple.) In that sense, I feel as though Apple is the exception that proves the rule. There are really (almost) no other brands in Americans' everyday lives that elicit such a strong brand identity.
- JackFr 5mo ago> But I feel like being a "PC user" was never a coherent social identity. But there were people who were vocally non-Mac, dismissing it as “great for students and graphic designers”, but not a computer for real work. (That was me in the 90’s. Of course eventually I began working on a Mac professionally.)
- vunderba 5mo agoYeah I could see that. I think Apple being naturally more vertically integrated (controlling the hardware and the software), was able to establish a stronger narrative around its identity early on in order to court certain types of people.