The brand as a symbol that costs money

What is it about?

The familiar explanations of brands circumscribe a scandalous possibility. They evade what every child seems to know: that brands are symbols that cost money. Explanations of brands evade this possibility by focusing on what symbols symbolize: either the quality of products (the "economic" explanation) or the meaning of symbols (the "cultural" explanation). But maybe the kid that asks his parents for Nike snickers knows better than that: what he wants, it seems, is simply snickers with the Nike symbol. There is a good reason why this possibility is evaded: a symbol that costs money cannot be incorporated within contemporary economic theory (as well as within our commonsense notions of economy). But the economic thought of Thorstein Veblen provides a way to understand brands as "costly symbols". The article argues that such a concept lies at the heart of Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class", and speculates how to apply it to brands.

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