What is a brand variant?

Answer 1

Although national branding identifies products with their manufacturers, it also makes products easily comparable. Complete unbranding makes products less comparable, but it causes products to lose their identity with their manufacturers. It is possible to only partially unbrand a

product and create what we call a branded variant. Branded variants are nationally branded

products which assume non-equivalent forms across retail outlets. Manufacturers create branded

variants by making special variants of their nationally branded products for different retailers and

encouraging retailers within the same region not to carry the same variants of the product. Branded variants may be created with changes in color, design, flavor, options, style, stain, motif, features and layout. For example, although most wrist watches carry national brands such as Seiko, Armitron, Elgin or Timex, for each national brand many different variants exist. The same brand of watch may come with different bands, have different chimes and have a variety of special features. The same brand of watches may be digital, be analog, have large hands, have small hands, have luminous hands, have a sub-second hand, have no hands, be water resistant to 300 feet, be battery powered, have a calendar, have a daily alarm, and so on.