Usage of 'brand' for lists of brands sold - Tagging general discussion - OpenStreetMap Community Forum

Usage of 'brand' for lists of brands sold - Tagging general discussion - OpenStreetMap Community Forum
Usage of 'brand' for lists of brands sold
General talk
Tagging general discussion
lonvia
(Lonvia)
July 9, 2025, 3:29pm
TomTom has just posted several challenges for changing commas to semicolons in the ‘brand’ tag (e.g.
here
). Being a bit surprised that there are use cases where ‘brand’ contains lists of values, I had a look at the
wiki
. And indeed it lists the following:
Often several brands offered:
Example motorcycle shop
shop=motorcycle
name=Moto Mania
operator=Joe Miller
brand=KTM;Harley-Davidson;Moto Guzzi
Zero
This seems a bit odd to me as it has a very different meaning from what ‘brand’ is usually used for. Usually, ‘brand’ can be considered something of an alternative name, because it is the brand that the shop/amenity operates under. In the motorshop example however, brand contains a list of brands sold. It is more alike to the ‘cuisine’ tag for restaurants than to a name tag.
Looking into the history of the page, it seems that the example
was added in 2018
by Rtfm. Given this user’s reputition for bad edits in the wiki, I guess that it save to assume that the change was made without any prior discussion.
What is your opinion? Is this a valid use of brand or should we be removing the example from the wiki and ask TomTom to modify their challange to remove this usage of brand?
@sbaido
, tagging you here, so you are aware of this topic)
5 Likes
Figurine tagging
Figurine tagging
SimonPoole
(Simon Poole)
July 9, 2025, 3:52pm
FWIW I’ve always considered
brand
as one of the undisputed cases of multi-value use. For example car dealerships that sell multiple car brands.
3 Likes
Map_HeRo
(Mikke)
July 9, 2025, 4:01pm
In this case brand comes along with different meanings. A large car dealer can have his own brand, say Mikkes Moto Shops. Selling different brands of Automobiles like Jaguar, Maserati, Porsche etc. How to distiniguish the meaning of brand in such cases?
Or imagine listing the brands sold by a supermarket being a brand of itself …
8 Likes
mueschel
(Mueschel)
July 9, 2025, 5:36pm
I agree that this double use is unfortunate.
Maybe we should suggest dedicated tags like
sells:brand, service:brand
or
brand:sales, brand:service
8 Likes
Minh_Nguyen
(Minh Nguyễn)
July 9, 2025, 6:18pm
lonvia:
Looking into the history of the page, it seems that the example
was added in 2018
by Rtfm. Given this user’s reputition for bad edits in the wiki, I guess that it save to assume that the change was made without any prior discussion.
Looking into this,
from 2010
, the page defined the key as being
exclusively
for a list of brands sold at a shop. In 2016, the definition was
expanded
to include store chains. I vaguely recall that store chains were already the main usage by then, but sometimes car repair shops and such would be tagged with the car brands they service, even if they aren’t formally associated with the carmaker.
File:2008-11-11 Hicks & Son VW Service.jpg
File:GS Tuning - May 2025 - Sarah Stierch.jpg
Back then, I suspect mappers viewed it only as a form of micromapping. Maybe we thought some future data consumer would let people search for compatible repair shops, similar to the use case for
fuel:*=*
, without expecting anyone to rely on it for the shop’s identity. Sold or serviced brands could be valuable information, but it’s definitely confusing to have it in the same
brand=*
key that we now primarily use to identify chain locations.
lonvia:
Being a bit surprised that there are use cases where ‘brand’ contains lists of values, I had a look at the
wiki
It’s very normal for a car or motorcycle dealership to serve multiple related brands (especially if those brands are owned by the same company). For example,
Normandin Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram Fiat
displays all its car brands on
a pole sign
. Over many years, the five carmakers ultimately merged into Stellantis, but the dealerships never market themselves based on the Stellantis brand.
A pole sign for Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram. (After this photo was taken, the dealership began selling Fiat vehicles too.)
1920×872 103 KB
(This combination is so common that many dealerships call themselves “
CDJR
” or “
CDJRF
” dealerships when advertising on the radio, but I expand the abbreviation for the sake of ordinary users.)
Besides automotive brands, some hotel and restaurant groups also do dual branding. But rest assured, this is akin to
cuisine=french;italian
, not
cuisine=pizza;pasta;soup;sandwich;dessert
Multiple delimited names in the name tag
It’s not just professionals: some retail businesses also combine brands in a manner that makes a multi-POI representation purely arbitrary. This is really just a single restaurant that happens to serve items from two brands:
File:KFC-Taco Bellin Malta, New York.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
I can’t tell you whether a slash or dash or space is technically the most appropriate delimiter. But if I order a Taco Bell burrito with a side of KFC mashed potatoes from the restaurant’s single counter, my credit card statement might well say
KFCTACOBELL
on it.
7 Likes
CjMalone
(Cj Malone)
July 9, 2025, 8:17pm
There is quite a spectrum of “brands”:
1 company, eg Apple
Franchises, eg McDonald’s
Some contract in place to sell the product, eg car dealerships
Shops that sell products, eg a phone shop being
brand=Apple;Samsung
I think we currently draw the line between 3 and 4. I’d be happy to draw it 2 and 3.
Few Automotive brands like Fait, Ferrari,etc are not available · Issue #8014 · osmlab/name-suggestion-index · GitHub
1 Like
hoserab
July 9, 2025, 10:57pm
Ha! I was presented with this very issue just a couple days ago, when I was thinking about adding
brand
tags to
“Wolfe Chevrolet GMC Buick”
The nearby, separate Cadillac dealership
I tagged with
brand=Cadillac
(which iD used NSI to quickly auto-fill
brand:wikipedia
and
brand:wikidata
tags), but I wasn’t sure what to do with the Chevrolet-GMC-Buick dealership.
Aside, regarding GM Canada dealerships:
Previously (before 2002) this particular Chevy-GMC-Buick dealer was a Chevrolet-Oldsmobile-Cadillac dealer. Decades earlier GM Canada had rid themselves of standalone dealers who offered only one of the brands from GM’s prolific stable, and unified them into Chev-Olds-Caddy dealers and Pontiac-Buick-GMC dealers… and then they unified the Saab and Isuzu dealers, who became Saab-Isuzu-
Passport
dealers, who became Saturn-Saab-Isuzu dealers, while the Chevy-Olds-Cadillac dealers added
Geo
in the late '80s, and the Pontiac-Buick-GMC dealers added
Asüna
in the early '90s…
Anyway, now they’re (pretty much) all Chevrolet-GMC-Buick dealers, who may or may not also offer Cadillac.
As Minh astutely pointed out above, this is extremely commonplace with new car dealers. It’s not just a matter of the
brand
tag being (‘mis-’)used to tag the brands that dealers the
sell
: these are the brands the dealerships themselves are
referred by
The Honda dealer a few kilometres away
from my example Chev-GMC-Buick dealer is no different: the only difference is that the Honda dealer only sells Hondas, so the
brand
tagging is straightforward. There’s nothing unique about the Honda dealer that sets it apart from any other Honda dealer, in just the same way Apple Stores look the same everywhere, and McDonald’s restaurants look the same everywhere. The Honda dealer in point of fact only has one sign on one face of the building (which faces away from the main entrance) that mentions the name of the dealer itself, otherwise every
other
sign on the building, on the ‘advertising totem’ out front, etc. just reads “HONDA”.
It seems silly to not tag the Chevrolet-GMC-Buick dealer with
brand=Chevrolet;GMC;Buick
, when the Cadillac dealer quite literally across the parking lot is easily tagged
brand=Cadillac
4 Likes
Minh_Nguyen
(Minh Nguyễn)
July 10, 2025, 12:36am
hoserab:
I tagged with
brand=Cadillac
(which iD used NSI to quickly auto-fill
brand:wikipedia
and
brand:wikidata
tags), but I wasn’t sure what to do with the Chevrolet-GMC-Buick dealership.
Here’s how I’d get something consistent in iD/Rapid:
Map three separate points, one for each brand.
Drag each one on top of the other, merging them into a single POI with the tags in the right order. iD is usually pretty good about putting the tag values in the right order, but pay attention to that.
Set the
name=*
tag to a human-readable, location-specific name.
Kovoschiz
(Kovoschiz)
July 10, 2025, 4:13am
sells:*=
vs
service:*:*=
is a further problem.
*:sales=
is another Rtfm advocacy. The most numerous now is
service:bicycle:retail=
with triple the number, and steady growth over the years. Would need to be
service:*:retail:brand=
, and
service:*:new_car_sales=
vs
service:*:used_car_sales=
(which can only be used for cars) changed to
second_hand=
already existing.
SimonPoole
(Simon Poole)
July 10, 2025, 4:34am
10
I’m not convinced that trying to differentiate between selling single and multiple brands makes any sense at all.
The question is more is it part of the establishments brand identity or not? Typically for car/motorcycle dealerships it is, supermarkets on the other hand tend to have a brand independent of whatever the products they are selling (I would note that there is the edge case of chains that might have both).
What we shouldn’t do is go down the rabbit hole of trying to use brand (or any other key) to document all the brands of all products sold.
5 Likes
Mateusz_Konieczny
(Mateusz Konieczny)
July 10, 2025, 8:19am
11
car shops are often very prominently branded with one or multiple brands they sell
using
brand
here seems to be make sense for listing such brands
and in turn say supermarkets are typically not branded with list of brands they sell
using
brand
here to list sold brands seems to make no sense
so, I would say that in this case it is used for marking branding
if motorcycle shop is not branded with brands they sell then it should not go into
brand
tag
3 Likes
SomeoneElse
(Andy Townsend)
July 10, 2025, 9:37am
12
Mateusz_Konieczny:
car shops are often very prominently branded with one or multiple brands they sell
using
brand
here seems to be make sense for listing such brands
The challenge is that car dealerships can be brands used by larger groups too. Until recently (and
still in OSM
) “Bristol Street Motors” was a brand used by
Vertu
. The challenge for data consumers is to know when
brand
is the brand of the
shop
, and when it is something like
brand:sales
**
** a tag that doesn’t appear in OSM -
sells
, not much used, is for “type of product” not “brand of product”, so
sells:brand
(suggested
above
), might confuse, but
brand:sales
, also suggested there, would not.
3 Likes
pavvv
July 10, 2025, 9:47am
13
SomeoneElse:
a tag that doesn’t appear in OSM -
sells
, not much used, is for “type of product” not “brand of product”, so
sells:brand
(suggested
above
), might confuse, but
brand:sales
, also suggested there, would not.
Good point but what if something like
brand:sells
would work something like
brand:sells=grocery
meaning the brand specified in
brand
sells groceries? Of course any amenity of a brand should be selling the same thing but this is just on a theoretical level, just for consistency, accounting for edge-cases.
To be honest I think
brands_sold
would work as well. I don’t see a need for having ‘
brand
’ as a prefix/suffix because it doesn’t have a lot to do with the
brand
tag.
2 Likes
SomeoneElse
(Andy Townsend)
July 10, 2025, 10:13am
14
pavvv:
Good point but what if something like
brand:sells
would work something like
brand:sells=grocery
meaning the brand specified in
brand
sells groceries?
If this is on a
shop
, then “the brand specified in
brand
sells groceries” doesn’t make a lot of sense. Have a look in
taginfo
to see what tags are in use and for what - you can see a few
sells:
examples for “types of product”.
pavvv
July 10, 2025, 10:24am
15
SomeoneElse:
If this is on a
shop
, then " he brand specified in
brand
sells groceries" doesn’t make a lot of sense. Have a look in
taginfo
to see what tags are in use and for what - you can see a few
sells:
examples for “types of product”.
Yes, I know. It’s just a theoretical example because it seems like a base for e.g.
brand:sells:tobacco
. Are there any arguments against
brands_sold
1 Like
SomeoneElse
(Andy Townsend)
July 10, 2025, 11:00am
16
pavvv:
Are there any arguments against
brands_sold
It
hasn’t troubled the scorers
yet, so it wouldn’t be adding another meaning to something already in use.
pavvv
July 10, 2025, 11:19am
17
SomeoneElse:
It
hasn’t troubled the scorers
yet, so it wouldn’t be adding another meaning to something already in use.
Neither has
brand:sales
so I don’t get your point.
It adds a meaning to the currently misused
brand
. I’ve also seen someone not know what tag to use for such brands that are being sold, so they just put it in a key that’s a polish translation of brands.
Such tag might not be the most important but it definitely should exist which is why I’m asking everyone here if
brands_sold
sounds good because it does to me. Perhaps
brands_serviced
could be another tag.
SomeoneElse
(Andy Townsend)
July 10, 2025, 11:33am
18
pavvv:
Neither has
brand:sales
so I don’t get your point.
My point
above
was that
brand:sales
wouldn’t be a problem but
sells:brand
would, because
sells
is already used for something similar but not quite the same.
mueschel
(Mueschel)
July 10, 2025, 2:51pm
19
As several said, putting the information into the ‘sells’ and ‘service’ name spaces will lead to problems, so we should use subkeys to
brand
. So I propose the following:
brand
The brand the POI belongs to
brand:sales
The brands of products the POI sells
The list can be extended if the POI offers more than sales, e.g.:
brand:service
The brands that are serviced at the POI
brand:repair
The brands that can be repaired at the POI
brand:rental
The brands that can be rented at the shop
brand:buy
The brands that can be sold at the POI (e.g. trading in used cars)
(I’m not sure about having both service and repair as subkeys, but I’m quite confident there are cases where one is correct and the other ist not)
For example a photography shop that belongs to the SuperPhotoGroup chain, that sells Banon and Mikon brands, and is a designated service point for Rony cameras would be tagged as
brand = SuperPhotoGroup
brand:sales = Banon;Mikon
brand:service = Rony
The Wiki should explicitly state that the tag should only be used if a POI is dedicated to a few brands. It should be made clear that it is not to be used to tag all the brands e.g. a supermarket offers.
In any case the brands listed should only be those available at the POI, not those the
brand
might sell elsewhere.
We might want to mention
brand:* = all
as a special case, if e.g. service or buying is not limited to certain brands.
3 Likes
0xb7767000
(0xb7767000)
July 10, 2025, 3:31pm
20
SimonPoole:
What we shouldn’t do is go down the rabbit hole of trying to use brand (or any other key) to document all the brands of all products sold.
We already do that with the
brewery=
-Tag on pubs. I know its provocative, but maybe we should stay true to the ATYL principle and invent a unique counterpart to
brewery
for each amenity
On a more serious note, I like the idea of
sells:
or
service:
that
@Kovoschiz
mentioned as well as the variant
brand:sales
that
@mueschel
mentioned, and I do think that
brewery
should be deprecated for the sake of consistency.
sells=Porsche; VW; Jeep
sells=Budweiser; Bitburger; Newcastle Brown Ale
on the same POI, instead of the current
brand=Porsche; VW; Jeep
brewery=Budweiser; Bitburger; Newcastle Brown Ale
on the same POI
1 Like
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