To the company and its owners, if my brand allows me to sell an equivalent widget for a higher margin, how is that not value? Just because value can be created or destroyed by a single action doesn't mean that value is somehow less valuable.Soap bubbles are beautiful but you wouldn't pay money for one because you know how ephemeral they are. The value in brands is the expectation of future revenue that will inure to them. I'm saying that not only is this fragile, if it's destroyed then it's not good for anything else. By contrast, suppose the Fancy Hotel Company goes bankrupt through mismanagement; you still have an actual fancy hotel - an aesthetically pleasing building, comfortable furniture, experienced staff, logistical relationships with suppliers etc. Changing the name on the building to the Cosy Hotel Company would be a sales problem in the short term, but would have zero impact on the actual operation of the hotel itself.
To the user, if I derive greater pleasure because I believe I have bought a more valuable product (attributable only to the brand), just because there is an equivalent widget out there, does that somehow discount my pleasure?
Yes. Let's take a simple example - processors. I'm sure you can think of reasons why some prefer Intel and others prefer AMD, and why those different choices might be valid depending on the users' criteria. But which processors do you think HN runs on?
You probably don't know or care because it makes no functional difference to you. You might still have preferences about the next computer you buy but only insofar as you can imagine it making a quantifiable difference to you.
As a consumer, your contribution to brand value is only as good as your knowledge of what makes a branded offering unique and irreproducible.