I spent last week on vacation with my wife in and around Vancouver, BC, where I picked up on a branding value from a new perspective. Generally, my wife and I prefer shopping with local merchants, checking out local restaurants, and basically experiencing what's unique about an area whether it's Vancouver or our own town of Minneapolis. However, we spent a fair amount of time visiting two large chains on an almost daily basis during our vacation: Petro Canada and Starbucks.

Did we need fuel every day? No. Were we looking for a highly caffeinated vacation? No. So what brought us to those two stores over and over again? Clean bathrooms. We generally left our hotel early each day and didn't return until we were ready to call it a day, but let's face it: when you have to go you have to go. Of course, whenever we stopped into one of the establishments we picked up a few things, so they made back well more than their flush-worth by providing public restrooms (um, I mean washrooms in Canada-speak).

So the Petro Canada and Starbucks brands drew us in day after day not based on the cleanliness of their fuel or quality of their dark roast. We simply associated them with well-needed relief.

Astonishingly, most local businesses in certain neighborhoods like Gas Town took the opposite approach of the local Starbucks: They posted signs explicitly stating that they offered, "No public washrooms." This particular neighborhood to the East of downtown Vancouver is only blocks from Vancouver's skid row so having public washrooms may not be the easiest thing to offer. But Starbucks manages to do it so they reap the reward.

Okay, what does this have to do with technology? Good question. Here are a few ideas:

A strong brand creates a sense of security. With Petro Canada, this gives me confidence that the bathrooms won't be a mess when we stop to pick up some Gatorade before a hike. We never visited the same Starbucks twice, but knew what to expect at every one we visited. Online, a strong brand tells people that you won't spam them, sell their personal data, or abuse their credit card. It also gives people confidence that presents will show up in time for birthdays or holidays.

The core service isn't always the main draw. I NEVER go to Starbucks in my home town because I've had time to compare it to other coffee shops in this market. However, we weren't really shopping for coffee. I believe we happened to pull into a Petro Canada first, then stuck with the brand after that since there was no perceived upside benefit from switching brands in the future. Amazon.com is a good example of a company providing a lot of services beyond their core service of shipping products. Free online reviews, recommendations, rankings, etc., differentiate them from other retailers just as capable of shipping a book, but consumers are more likely to spend time researching books on Amazon, so Amazon has a better chance of closing the sale.

Check this out: I just remembered that Paco Underhill mentioned something in his book, "Why We Buy?" about clean gas stations, so I went to Amazon, searched for the book, then searched within the book for the phrase "gas stations" and immediately found the quote on page 127: