This is a response to Talise Tsai’s blog post, “The Face of Loblaw’s”

https://blogs.ubc.ca/talise/2014/10/04/loblaws-regional-positioning-strategy/

The main portfolio companies owned by parent company Berkshire Hathaway.

Loblaw’s, as with many large scale retailers and holdings companies such as Cerberus Capital Management and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. implement the use of varying brand names for its stores and subsidiaries in order to ‘break up’ the companies image allowing different stores owned by the same umbrella corporation to specialize within the market. This idea of varying company names makes sense from both a business and marketing perspective. Imagine if all of the companies owned by Berkshire Hathaway all shared the same name. Not only would this be a very overwhelming experience for consumers who would purchase everything from their Heinz ketchup to their GIECO insurance from one company. This would also be a very difficult situation from a marketing perspective because marketing one big conglomerate effectively would be next to impossible. Therefore by breaking up the company’s image you can effectively market each individual product in its own respective market, stressing the products unique points of difference and market value.

From a financial point of view a parent company is an effective way to maintain a companies status as a secure investment because of its diversified subsidiaries. Meaning that because a large holdings company such as Berkshire Hathaway is very well diversified and owns companies that compete in a variety of industries so if one industry or market crashes it won’t bankrupt the parent company.