MBA students often wonder how product management is different from brand management. Brand management is a form of organization wherein a multi-brand company organizes itself around the various brands it sells. Compared to the functional form of organization, this form of organization is an effective way to decentralize decision making in a multi-brand company without losing centralized oversight. This form of organization was introduced by Procter & Gamble, USA, in 1931. It was swiftly adopted by companies around the globe; Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, Mars, Hasbro, all customer-centric companies with a collection of brands started organizing themselves around their brands. Brand management became a staple course in all business schools. For decades, brand management was one of the popular career paths for MBA graduates. At every top-tier business school, MBA students used to compete with their classmates to get the coveted assistant brand manager position with a reputed consumer product company. A brand management position at Procter & Gamble used to be the dream job for many MBA students in most business school campuses, not just in the US but globally. However, the popularity of brand management jobs has dwindled with the growth of technology-oriented companies such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. These mono-brand companies have only one brand that is usually managed at the highest level. So they do not have brand managers; instead they have product managers. Product management is in many ways similar to brand management, but in some ways it is also distinct from brand management. In this video, I discuss the similarities of product and brand management roles with Bill DeGroot and Anvar Varadaraj, two managers who have experience in these roles.
Sabanci Professor of Management & Marketing and Associate Dean of NYC Initiatives at Cornell University. Thomas is a behavioral scientist who runs experiments to understand, model, and predict customer behavior. His experiments have demonstrated how framing, user interface, and sociomoral factors influence customer behavior. His recent research examines customer behavior in digital markets.
What is the difference between product management and brand management?
MBA students often wonder how product management is different from brand management. Brand management is a form of organization wherein a multi-brand company organizes itself around the various brands it sells. Compared to the functional form of organization, this form of organization is an effective way to decentralize decision making in a multi-brand company without losing centralized oversight. This form of organization was introduced by Procter & Gamble, USA, in 1931. It was swiftly adopted by companies around the globe; Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, Mars, Hasbro, all customer-centric companies with a collection of brands started organizing themselves around their brands. Brand management became a staple course in all business schools. For decades, brand management was one of the popular career paths for MBA graduates. At every top-tier business school, MBA students used to compete with their classmates to get the coveted assistant brand manager position with a reputed consumer product company. A brand management position at Procter & Gamble used to be the dream job for many MBA students in most business school campuses, not just in the US but globally. However, the popularity of brand management jobs has dwindled with the growth of technology-oriented companies such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. These mono-brand companies have only one brand that is usually managed at the highest level. So they do not have brand managers; instead they have product managers. Product management is in many ways similar to brand management, but in some ways it is also distinct from brand management. In this video, I discuss the similarities of product and brand management roles with Bill DeGroot and Anvar Varadaraj, two managers who have experience in these roles.