It's a kind of obfuscation in many cases. How many people know that P&G or Unilever are behind a huge number of supermarket goods?
I think problems often happen when the big corporate owners sell to private equity who are more often interested in boosting short term earnings.
2) Unknown holding company: yes, people can have general knowledge and to a degree it's their own fault for not knowing. But it also isn't, nobody has time to read about what thousands of brands are out there.
> I think problems often happen when the big corporate owners sell to private equity who are more often interested in boosting short term earnings.
Absolutely. I remember going to Ed's Diner here in the UK. They made a great burger in SoHo before I left the country for a few years. When I came back, they'd expanded across the country, which was a bit surprising to me, but I went in to eat there because of my previous experience. I took one bite, it was terrible, and I immediately told my wife "this tastes like private equity". I go on google, guess what, it was indeed bought by PE and they'd totally changed the burger. This is a form of lying to people that should not be tolerated but of course is a grey zone because it not easy to define when you've changed the burger so much that you can't call it the same thing.
I think we probably mostly agree on the whole brands thing. My point was really that P&G / Unilever are probably better than most in practice at being decent stewards of the brands they own.
Was literally in a conversation just a couple months ago where I was expressing that I had finished deleting facebook for privacy-related reasons.
They chimed in with, "I know right! That's why I only use Instagram..."
I think the me of a few years ago would have discounted point 1). Today, I think it's a fairly salient point, with regards to actual market effects. Albeit, I'm not advocating for any action(s) to be taken with regards to it.