The Brand-As-Verb Phenomenon, Our Genericidal Pastime: Searching for the Truth Behind Googling, Xeroxing, Fedexing, and Much More

Abstract

Though much of the marketing literature has focused upon brand names and the importance of preventing genericization, this perception not only fails to take into account the value created by brand genericization, but also specifically to address the value created by the phenomenon known as “brand-as-verb.” This phenomenon offers not only insight into customer co-creation, but the fundamental premises of Service Dominant Logic, namely the concept that the category of products traditionally labeled, “goods,” subsumes into that of services (Vargo and Lusch 2004).