Brand rent exploits status signaling and positional goods demand

Evidence

Brand Rent is a form of monopoly rent which the seller can extract from consumers who are motivated to pay for a branded item or service more than its exchange value, e.g. in pursuit of status signalling or ownership of positional goods (i.e. goods desired not so much for themselves but, rather, for the fact that others cannot own them, e.g. a limited-run print or an antique vase). — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 805

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines brand rent as a subtype of monopoly rent, explaining why consumers pay above exchange value.
• XREF: Positional goods concept links to Thorstein Veblen’s conspicuous consumption and status economics. — connects to: Brands profit by monetizing user-generated word-of-mouth influence. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 253; Brand loyalty is a calculated effort to create irrational attachments that survive competition — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 273; Status pursuit rationally outweighs practical utility in many consumer decisions — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 154
• SHARE: A crisp definition-of-rent taxonomy worth sending to anyone working on platform economics or digital markets.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 805