The importance of the brand

摘要

British Rail was one of the best known brands in the country. Everybody knew what it did: it ran trains. And everybody had an opinion about it. With the break-up of BR ten years ago, that brand was lost. But some of the old perceptions persist. Many stakeholders -passengers, local authorities and others - still see the railways as a social service. Although train services have been in the private sector for ten years, people do not perceive them to be a commercial service in the same way as they do, say, the services of Boots the chemist.