How do you feel about name brand goods and services?

For 25 years I was one of those Mad Men who wrote ads and TV commercials for national and regional product and service brands, so my view is skewed toward the position that many name brands generally tend to be of higher quality than cheaper off-brands.

However, now that I’m retired and more frugal with my disposable income, I’ve discovered a number of store brands that are both cheaper and quite adequate for my needs.

Depends on what it is, and what the company is currently like.

Q-Tips (the paper ones) seem somehow far better than all the generic copies I’ve tried.

Most name-brand Rx drugs seem like a way to waste money on a probably morally bankrupt corporation.

I have a conviction from childhood experience that Duracell are the best batteries and Energizer suck, even though I know the technology has changed and I may be wrong now.

I also use a smartphone app (Buycott) which scans UPC symbols in stores and compares the product to a database of causes I support which have comments on the behavior of the companies that make them. For years now, this has been greatly affecting which brands I buy, and shown me that Safeway and Kroger are full of products from evil companies, so I now also mostly shop at Costco and Trader Joe.

Interesting Q and even more interesting tags. Dying to hear about name-brand sex.

Totally agree about Q-Tips. I’ve tried several generic brands. Ugh! On the other hand, I used to think Band-Aids and Kleenex were the best but I’ve found cheaper brands of both that I think are actually better.

I judge each product on its own merits. For food items, ones taste is so highly personal that there is really no reliable guideline other than your own taste test. Some generic products are just as good as name brand, so I’ll try any generic at least once to see if I like it.

Prescription meds are a totally different situation. By law, any generic drug must contain an equivalent amount of the active ingredient. There is no wiggle room there. So, name brand drugs aren’t generally worth the higher price since you’re getting the exact same active ingredient.

There are a few exceptions to this but very very few. Do your research carefully, especially with heart medications and anything with a time release formulation.

I generally buy the least expensive item which gets the job done and doesn’t taste like crap :)

@Jeruba seems to me that sex to some might be a purely mechanical event. That is to say, it doesn’t matter who it’s with. In that sense sex might be generic for them. So long as it’s sex, they’re content.

To others, like me, it matters a great deal. It is not a mechanical thing. It is about love, and lust, and attraction, and that is more name brand. Exclusive to one manufacturer.

About the only thing to recommend name brands is that the company may, may mind you, be more responsive to customer complaints because of a desire to protect their reputation. Otherwise, I’d say it’s a matter of cost and personal taste. I bought some mayonnaise the other day when the store brand was on sale. It’s only OK, and I would otherwise buy the particular name brand which i prefer.

Too many products and services to discuss. Food, it all depends on what it is. Clothes and shoes, designer may mean handmade by Italian artisans but that doesn’t mean you can’t get something well made that’s not designer.

I’m also thinking of other things in the household, like towels or kitchen stuff. It all depends. There’s so much stuff that can be discussed.

Name brand is not a guarantee of quality or suitabiity.

It completely depends. Sometimes not going with brand name ends up costing more when the cheap stuff breaks or is generally less or inferior. More often than not there is a middle or lesser known brand that offers comparable or even superior quality for less. I’m not really on board with “you get what you pay for” but more like “shop around for the best value”

For me paper goods, TP, paper towels, paper plates is a prime example of you get what you pay for. With generic single ply toilet paper you have to use 3 x’s as much to do the job a couple sheets of Cottonelle Ultra and with generic it often falls apart while in use at the worst possible moments. Same thing with generic paper towels. The cheap stuff is OK for minor spills, but when some knocks over a full glass of milk or you are wiping down the refrigerator, you definitely want a roll of Bounty in the cabinet and that is all I buy. You ultimately end up using 3 x’s the number of sheets of paper towels to do the work of one Bounty towel and it is easy to do the math on the cost basis of cleaning up a spill. Same with paper plates. My secretary is in charge of purchasing paper goods and I finally had to put my foot down on the cheap cheap paper plates and Dollar store plastic forks and knives. You easily have to use 4 cheap paper plates to not have moist foods saturate the kitchen table and I got tired of picking broken plastic tines out of my leftover mac and cheese.

Clothing and furniture is where I draw the line. There I always buy quality name brand as there is no comparison and worth the investment.

As far as sex goes….getting married was well worth the investment. :P

I shoot for the best quality at the best price.

For clothes and other wearables, that means I seldom buy anything retail. Goodwill even carries my favorite brand of underwear NIP for 99¢. Socks are frequently on sale. I have $250 jeans I bought for $4 and, honestly, I get a kick out of wearing them, even if the only notable difference is the tag.

Food I buy cheap and take note. Aldi products are consistent, so I favor them if possible. You can depend on their fresh produce, dairy, and bakery. I’m not fond of a lot of the boxed stuff. That I look for sales and buy name brand on sale, and stock up.

Buy around, and pay attention. There are cheaper versions of nearly every name brand product on the market that are every bit as good quality.
Nearly.

When my daughter was a baby, I’d buy her diapers, wipes and formula from Costco, Kirkland (Costco generic) brand. They were, to me, just as good as any other and way better priced.

There are very few things I am adamant about with regards to my preference for a name-brand.

My dish soap is Dawn Platinum.

My toilet cleaner is Lysol Power. I even filmed a side-by-side comparison of Lysol Power and the equally-priced competitor made by Clorox. There was no contest. Clorox couldn’t budge the rust stains. Lysol removed them in a matter of seconds.

I really can’t think of anything else off-hand.

There are a lot of brands that I pointedly avoid, either because I know they’re overpriced for what they are (I’m looking at you, Tide), or because a generic is just as good if not better. The local grocery chain, Publix, has an awesome store brand that is name-brand quality and in many cases, given equal price, I’ll choose the Publix brand.

Speaking of “Awesome”, the all-purpose cleaner from The Dollar Tree cleans like no other on the market, that I know of.

Since I’ve seen at first hand – because I worked for the manufacturer – how “name brands” are applied to products that are made on the same production lines, by the same people, using the same machines, processes and materials as “generic”, I don’t much quibble over brands any more. (When I worked for an RTA furniture manufacturer [Ready-to-Assemble; flat-packed particleboard laminate shelving and so forth] we also made IKEA products on the same line. The only differences were the S-shaped key that IKEA includes with all of these products, and the fact that they also flew in an inspector to oversee our initial production runs to ensure that we did things as they specified. Well, that and the packaging and instruction sheets, of course. Our own instructions were generally better, BTW.)

Now that I know this from my own experience, and having read about it most of my life anyway, I look beyond branding, packaging, most television and print advertising – and just buy the brands advertised by the prettiest models.

@ibstubro – I almost named it, but I do know one degreaser at least that has more power. In fact, Purple Power has so much power that it’s actually peeled the paint off of an enameled lawn furniture set I had once. I use both, but for different purposes.

That’s true, and it’s not, @CWOTUS.

I worked for a mid-sized food manufacturer that kept the production lines running by making store and generic brands when the name brand product wasn’t needed. Some of the products were identical but for the label. Others were formulated for the customer. For example Pancho Villa taco sauce was made by the same people, on the same line, using the same equipment as Old El Paso, but the resemblance ended there. PV was thin, vinegary dross.

Ralston Foods is master at mimicking the configuration of the national brands when, in reality, all it really makes is off-brand. Doesn’t speak to the quality and consistency, necessarily, but you are not buying Kellogg’s cereal at a bargain.
Buyer beware.

@ibstubro – the Ralston is a good example of something that doesn’t measure up.

But the flip side is OTC medications. Take CVS ibuprofin versus Motrin or Advil or one of the name brands. All have the same active ingredient, and usually the same color. These are regulated by the FDA so the medical effects are the same. The CVS bottle costs $2.89, and the Advil $5.99. What am getting for the additional $3.00? A pretty name on the bottle?

@elbanditoroso – Yep. I get OTC medicine at Dollar Tree. It’s all the same stuff.

Well, there again, @elbanditoroso, you’re paying for a certain assurance that you’re buying exactly what’s on the label – nothing more and nothing less.

I believe this is from 2013:
Those Generic Drugs May Not Have Been What You Thought They Were

My personal opinion is that common sense applies here. You can’t rely on packaging. Period. If the contents of the package are not equal to name brand, don’t fall for the low price. Consistency is the biggest flag. If there is a noticeable variation in color, shape, thickness etc. between packages, I would go to another brand.

There’s a piece on NPR right now about how in Asian they are paying a premium for New Balance shoes because they’re made in America.
Americans are all about importing cheap shit, while Asians are increasingly putting a premium on quality – and “Made in America” seems to be an easy standard.

I worked on a line making the now discontinued “Bowl-Apetit!”
A dollar store came out with a $1 alternative that was components made in America but assembled in China. Now, is that something you really want to eat? To save a few cents?

I’m skeptical of generics, and (barring name-brand sale items) generics is mostly what I consume.

Safeway Select soda is better than Pepsi at ⅓rd the price.

Mac and cheese.. Gotta be the blue box. Generics don’t come close.

The only place I ever see a difference is in some canned vegetables like green beans. The name brands are superior.

Other than that, off brands are about the same, or, in some cases, even better.
They used to have an off brand of refried beans that was much better than El Paso. The off brand was creamier. I’m sure that the reason was it had more fat, which tends to freak people out.

It depends for me. For some things, I buy generic. For example, paper towels, coffee filters, sandwich bags. Others I insist on my preferred name brand because I have found it makes a taste difference: coffee, Greek yogurt.

Clothes and products brand names do matter in terms of wear. For example, Coleman coolers.

Did you know that Rubbermaid (and other assembly factories too, I’m sure) has a special production line just for WalMart? Yep. The coolers you buy at Walmart don’t have foam insulation in the lids. They demand to get their stuff at $X price, and the only way the companies can meet that price is to cut corners like that.

That’s a long standing gimmick in the “Low Price Guarantee” war, @Dutchess_III.
If you have enough volume, you can demand your own, specific product and model number.

I know I’ve told the story before, but I once had 2 Magnavox VCRs of the same age, but with different features.
Well, the remote controls had different features. One remote had an eject button, the other did not. Both VCRs responded to “eject”, but one was a bought as a “special purchase” at KMart. The fact that the KMart version didn’t have an eject button on the remote gave it a unique model number, excluding it from comparison with the same model available elsewhere.

I think there’s a lot of that kind of name-brand quality deterioration done in the name of Black Friday. A stripped down version at a stripped down price.

@ARE_you_kidding_me

Definitely . . . I have always preferred RC Cola to the two big national brands. It’s harder to find, though.

@ibstubro @Seek Cheap distilled vinegar is the ticket!