Branding is the process of creating distinctive and durable perceptions in the minds of consumers. A brand is a persistent, unique business identity intertwined with associations of personality, quality, origin, liking and more. Here s why the effort to brand your company or yourself pays off.1. Memorability. A brand serves as a convenient container for a reputation and good will. Develop your own identifiers and nail them to your company name in the minds of your public.2. Loyalty. When people have a positive experience with a memorable brand, they’re more likely to buy that product or service again than competing brands. People who closely bond with a brand identity are not only more likely to repurchase what they bought, but also to buy related items of the same brand, to recommend the brand to others and to resist the lure of a competitor’s price cut. That’s loyalty. And supposedly, more people have the motorcycle brand "Harley Davidson" tattooed on their body than any other brand name. That’s out of this world loyalty.3. Familiarity. Branding has a big effect on non customers too. Psychologists have shown that familiarity induces liking. Consequently, people who have never done business with you but have encountered your company identity sufficient times may become willing to recommend you even when they have no personal knowledge of your products or services. Seeing your ads on local buses, having your pen on their desk, reading about you in the Hometown News, they spread the word for you when a friend or colleague asks if they know a ____ and that’s what you do.4. Premium image, premium price. Branding can lift what you sell out of the realm of a commodity, so that instead of dealing with price shoppers you have buyers eager to pay more for your goods than for those of competitors. I once saw one middle aged Cambridge, Massachusetts, intellectual argue to several colleagues that Dunkin’ Donuts’ coffee tastes better than Starbucks’. So contradictory was this claim to the two companies’ reputations for this demographic group that the colleagues refused to put the matter to a taste test.