Brand Genericization

What is Brand Genericization? 

Brand genericization is a unique phenomenon that impacts a small minority of extremely influential companies. This process, which has played an integral role in some of the largest success stories in the 21st century, is the process by which the name of a brand and the function of the service or product it provides become synonymous. The most prevalent cause of this may be observed through the technology giant Google, who, over the past two decades, developed a search engine universally regarded as the best-in-class by a wide margin. Due to this unforeseen market dominance, the adjective “googling” developed through the urbanized English language and became synonymous with the function of performing an internet search.  

Despite their differences, the term has remained ingrained in the minds of many individuals today, who continue to use varied alternative search engine software such as Bing, Yahoo, and MSN, while maintaining the guise of “googling” whatever query they pose. When a trademarked product or service becomes so widely used to describe any items of similar caliber it loses its distinctiveness and individuality. It then begins to refer to a general class or category of products rather than that of a single company or brand. Depending on the management and business structure of the given company, this phenomenon can propel companies to perform at a level leap and bounds above their competition or spell a downward spiral into a pit of irrelevancy leading to eventual insolvency. 

Company Overview: 

Google: 

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) got its start as a search engine software. Founded in 1998, the company originally possessed a single function and now has an array that spans over 30 distinct products across webmail (Gmail), online storage, navigation systems (Google Maps), and most recently, physical cell phone technology. However, the search engine remains the crown jewel of its transnational corporation, as it alone commands over 70% of the global market share for online searches.  Throughout its lifespan, the term “Google” became synonymous with the act of searching the internet, and thus the adjective, “googling” was inaugurated into the English dictionary. Led by its proprietary search engine and technological property, google continues to be a market leader and expand healthily into various branches of the technology space by fostering an environment of innovation and development. Investing heavily into industry-driving products, google has a rich history of successful launches of various innovative technologies, some of which were inspired by the data collected from the millions of daily searches on its engine. Google has also scaled its operations through inorganic means, with notable acquisitions including Marc Broadcasting, Applied Semantics (AdSense), and DoubleClick, all of which are world-leading Web advertising firms, which helped aid Google in its rampant expansions, ensure a steady stream of development and potentially for growth with consistency improving means of analyzing and satisfying consumer needs. 

Tupperware: 

Tupperware (NYSE: TUP) is a food packaging company based out of Massachusetts, USA. Founded in 1946, the company has established itself as a leading vendor in the plastic container industry with consistent innovation finding itself the market leader in the industry, capturing an impressive 14.7% at its peak in 2012. They followed this with a strong 2013, their most profitable year to date. The company remained competitive by launching innovative products each decade and building off its existing network of successful launches. The Wonderlier Bowl, introduced in 1946, remains iconic today, while creations such as the Servalier Bowls and FridgeSmart Containers kept them relevant throughout the late 20th century. Some of their most popular items included the Bell Tumblers, small plastic sippy cups that were introduced in 1948 but have remained an industry staple since their release. Additionally, their line of Modular Mates containers revolutionized the plastic container space, as these stackable containers revolutionized pantry organization and food storage.  

Throughout the following decades, the company attempted to expand into other areas, such as its Lunch ‘N Bag sets and Sandwich Keeper in the 1980s with an emphasis on sustainability. Although this did well to improve their brand image, their overall output of innovative items stagnated through the remainder of the 20th century. Their most recent attempts at expanding their product range were with the Mando Chef series and Microwave Pressure Cooker. The Cooker remaining prevalent to some degree today, as variation of the original commodity may be purchased on both their Australian and Canadian websites. However, since then the company has faced competitive challenges to remain innovative, leading to financial difficulties as it fell behind its competitors. The company based its success on being an innovator in a copycat industry and failed to expand its operations into new branches to build on its early market dominance. Since 2013, the company has seen a fall in revenue of 50%, and on September 18, 2024, the company filed for bankruptcy.  

Google has consistently generated increasing revenue margins year on year since its formation in 2002. This unprecedented success can be attributed to its various competitive advantages. One such advantage is the network effect. This is a phenomenon by which a company can bolster the profitability and usage rates of all its products by creating an ecosystem wherein all its services coincide or serve a function uniquely complementary to another. This allows them to invest heavily in innovations, while simultaneously seeing margins increase in different sectors of their product line with little to no year-on-year growth in investment into that division. Google embodies this mechanism with its strong network surrounding its big three flagship apps, Google Maps, Gmail, and YouTube, and can be seen by the following chart below, depicting Googles advertising revenue across all platforms from 2003-2023. 

Impacts of Gentricization: 

Google: 

Genericization of the Google name took place throughout the early 2000s, and the verb “Google” slowly became widespread across urban communities and cities alike. By 2006, the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the worlds leading language suppliers, included the term “Google” in their official annual publication. However, this effect did not come without any speedbumps, and Google and its associated product line were faced with countless lawsuits featuring their trademark as a result of their widespread popularity.  

The most prominent case that arose in recent memory is that of Elliot v. Google, Inc. in 2017, whereby the plaintiffs, under the citation of the Lanham Act, created a website called googledisney.com. The act states that a registered trademark can be canceled if it fulfills certain external requirements constituting it as a generic name for the goods or services, or a portion thereof, for which it is registered. Some precedent cases that were brought to light featured those concerning the terms “Band-Aid”, Aspirin, and Zipper, all three of which were ruled to be genericized and thus lost trademark protection rights under this act. 

Therefore in 2012, it was seemingly feasible that the protection may be removed from the company's portfolio, and thus Google took swift and effective action to address this threat. Google countered these claims immediately with a complaint filed through the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) alleging that these registrations were created in bad faith, and constituted cybersquatting. The plaintiffs countered with the aforementioned Lanham Act and moved for the court to recognize the verb “Google” as a generic term that simply describes the act of internet searching, as opposed to referencing the prominent brand. On May 16, 2017, a full five years after the initial suit was filed, the Ninth Circuit rejected the plaintiff's position on the grounds of genericide theory. The court ruled that although the term had been incorporated into the mainstream vernacular, it had not yet reached a point of definite definition, as the term was not empirically proven to be used to describe a search of any search engine and was still only used in the context of an individual “Googling” using the google search engine.  

The outcome of this case highlights the dominance of the “Google” brand – as the court did recognize it as a term used by the general public only to describe the function of using their engine – it also highlights the economic moat around its brand Google has built. Google had become so dominant in their field that whenever someone used the term “googling” the odds were likely enough for them to actually be using Google that the court ruled in their favour. To prove empirically that others use this term to refer to other search engines would be an extremely costly and strenuous endeavor, and even then since Google maintains a monopoly on the internet search market, a fair and evident study will likely only reveal that a small minority use it for this purpose, while the vast majority mean it to be through the Google engine, simply because the Google engine is the market standard.  

Empowered by the results of this case, Google continued to move forward with its business plans and continued to capitalize on this phenomenon. Google’s genericization heightened their already dominant brand awareness and enabled them to launch a compelling campaign from 2017 to 2024, where they saw a 23% global market share increase of its flagship product, the Google search engine. Although these figures may vary from different sources, the consensus remains that Google has solidified its current position of market dominance and has been rapidly improving upon it since 2017, directly after the aforementioned ruling. While genericization has threatened its trademark at times, the synonymity coupled with a brand that has proven to possess highly informed and educated leadership, as they routinely roll out innovative product lines, and remain aware enough to invest heavily in their new successful launches and integrate or terminate unsuccessful launches. This ability, coupled with their billion-dollar corporate empire, places them in a seemingly infallible position within not only the search engine market but the greater tech industry.  

However, a recent ruling by the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Google had violated antitrust laws by engaging in monopolizing behavior within the search engine marketplace. They did so by purchasing the rights to become the default search engine of almost all popular web browsers available to consumers, effectively preventing their competitors from even sniffing a look at their crown. Build by sophistication and empowered by an ironclad will to remain on top of the food chain, this move was a natural progression to solidify their position at the top of the industry food chain. This ruling opened the doors to numerous possible penalties, including a fine or the mandating of a “choice screen” available to users upon opening their web browser. Although no ruling has been made, as this requires a separate court case altogether, it is our belief that the company will face financial punishment but will not be forced to upend the way in which it provides its service, which is fundamentally a free choice. People have the option to use the Google search engine to look for their preferred provider. This relationship is twofold, and more often times is observed playing out in the opposing manner, where a user prompted by competitors such as Bing or DuckDuckGo, uses this to search or the Google engine despite which appears as the default. The most feasible outcome currently is one of a compromise, where Google is able to retain the rights to be a default engine for some of the web browsers, but is mandated to relinquish some of its market control to competitors. However, since Google owns chrome and has strong influence over other providers such as Firefox and Safari, it is unlikely that any such mandate will severely impact Googles financial outlooks moving forward. 

Tupperware: 

Tupperware, a once iconic brand within the plastic container space, fell dramatically from its once infallible position of prominence and faded into obscurity as shifting market trends and more innovative and cost-efficient alternatives overcame the once ubiquitous brand. The effects specific to genericization were simply catalysts that excelled Tupperware’s trajectory towards its inevitable doom, as it remained a relic, rooting itself in the marketing and business model of the 1950s and refusing to adapt to modern consumer preferences. However, in this section, we will focus predominantly on the direct impacts the genericization had on the company, rather than focusing on the enigma of issues that spelled their downfall. 

Tupperware was the brand most similar to the “Kleenex” of its industry, as it raked in so much retention that the brand became the shorthand for the product itself throughout the 1950’s. However, over the following decades, the company refused to innovate, allowing competitors to flood the market with cheaper, innovative, and more sustainable alternatives. The once distinct Tupperware brand faded into mere plastic containers, lost in a sea of irrelevance as the market oversaturated itself with similar and more effective models. Tupperware suffered from a combination of outdated sales and distribution modeling combined with the negative externalities of a product no longer viewed by the mainstream as unique lost its most potent asset, its individuality. The market became diluted with copycat products that offered a more modern design, with brands such as Rubbermaid, OXO, and Pyrex eroding much of Tupperware’s market share throughout the late 1900s and early 2000s. Even newer brands such as Stasher, a brand focused solely on advertising the sustainability of their products, garnered widespread popularity as a result of the innovation, with a brand like Tupperware becoming overshadowed by these altruistic alternatives. 

Tupperware’s downfall began when it failed to adapt to key technological changes in the 21st century. As the concept of home parties fell out of fashion and new technologies emerged, Tupperware was slow to capture the digital sales market. By the early 2000s, it had remained committed to its traditional direct sales method, with up to 90% of its sales coming from in-store purchases as late as 2023. Meanwhile, competitors like Amazon and Rubbermaid recognized the potential of online sales, securing global partnerships to expand their reach. Tupperware’s reluctance to embrace e-commerce decimated its competitiveness, as alternative brands offering more affordable products quickly eroded its market share. Moreover, Tupperware failed to address the growing consumer demand for environmentally friendly alternatives, such as glass containers, further diminishing its relevance. 

Ultimately, the biggest failure on the part of Tupperware was its inability to capitalize on its product's ubiquity and remain competitive by producing innovative products and services. Much of what contributed to Tupperware's early success can be categorized by its unique marketing and exclusivity, as its once iconic Tupperware party, which gained rapid popularity across urban North America throughout the 1950s, slowly fell out of fashion in the following decades, while the brand seemingly refused to let go of the activity. Once the brand finally decided to enter the mainstream, appearing in stores such as Target in October 2002, the brand became lost in the sea of similar products all producing essentially the same service. The once indistinguishable brand had now fallen into a realm of uncertainty, but a lack of progressive thinking and a severe lapse in judgment by its leadership solidified its downfall, eventually leading the company to file for insolvency in 2024. Below, a graph emphasizing the fall off in revenue in the early 2010’s, leading to a sharp decline in both revenue and stock price leading up to April 2023. 

Comparative Analysis