This text field is referred to as “brand” in certain areas of the backend, and in other areas it's referred to as “manufacturer”.

I believe that a meeting of the mind's would be quite beneficial and less confusing.

My vote would be to stick with brand because it's less text, and you don't have to increase the column on the left-hand side of the admin, but of course that would create a problem in the backend if the database table itself is called manufacturers, and that's what you have on the export options.

Furthermore, would be nice to be able to save export settings, give them a nice descriptive name so on specific exports I don't have to recheck everything again.

Just some ideas,
-Ray