Having stumbled upon this blog post a couple of days ago, I was shocked to find out just how powerful certain companies are. It is quite fascinating, and even scary to see how these 10 corporations have taken control over consumer purchases.
For example, Nestle, one of the 10 companies in this chart, owns almost 8,000 different brands. It also has relations with other major corporations such as L’Oreal and the clothing brand Diesel. This large product scope indefinitely contributes to Nestle’s large yearly profit, where sales increased to 45.2 billion in half of 2013 alone. Knowing that Nestle has a vast product mix, it was smart to do brand extensions and not constantly using their brand. For example, when I think of Nestle, I think of chocolate bars, not Gerber, a baby-food brand under Nestle. This use of individual brands allowed these products to separate themselves from Nestle’s brand image of delicious candies.
Another example is Unilever, a corporation that serves around 2 billion people. Their products range from Vaseline to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. As a consumer, I make no connection between these two brand, let alone spending time to think if there is in fact a connection. This does show their success in marketing to many different consumer groups based on different profiles that match these different brands. For example, Ben & Jerry’s is marketed as a fun ice cream for people who love desserts, whereas Vaseline would be marketed towards consumers who possibly have dry skin.
Because these corporations have been successfully marketing to separate consumers, I was unaware that the same companies own many of these brands. I commend them for becoming that powerful, but it also makes me want to start supporting the smaller local companies as well.