Brands and Marketing Products A commodity is a good or even a service whose wide availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors other than price, such as the brand name. By definition, commodities lack differentiation and the resulting ability to command a price premium that distinguishes them from strong brands. Brands also ensure repeat purchases and advertising, thus ensuring a market share that is predictable and capable of growing based on their unique positioning strategy rather than based on cost competition alone. Even with raw materials, there are some parameters that brands can use to position themselves to gain a place in the consumer's memory and consequently in their shopping cart. Some of the most widely accepted ones are: Consistency of product quality, Customization of the product as much as possible, Providing a wider range of products, Identifying the market segments that generate the most profits and modifying or adding an offering to meet the their specific needs, unique packaging, emotional branding and even basing the brand on building a unique image to the point of declaring it has a brand personality. In fact, focusing on getting consumers to build an emotional identification with the brand and its personality has a much more lasting effect and creates much greater loyalty than focusing only on functional and useful attributes that a competitor would be able to to easily match if not surpass. Hamam is a typical example of such a strategy of building a strong brand image to attract consumers. Hamam has captured the consumer's mental space by building an image of honesty and protection around itself even though the product itself is seen to offer room for very few unique or differentiating features that could ensure that a consumer remains loyal to the brand because given the plethora of operators in this market, any new successful variant would be immediately adopted by competitors too. Even at a time when the brand is evolving to meet the challenge of trying to attract the youth segment, the core value of trust on which the value of the brand has been heavily based over the years is still emphasized to the extent possible. .Hamam: A Brief History Hamam is one of the oldest soap brands in India. It was launched in the 1930s along with Cinthol (by Godrej). At the time of its inception, Hamam was owned by TOMCO (Tata Oil Manufacturing Company).).