The `DISTINCT` keyword is a powerful tool in SQL that helps you eliminate duplicate rows or values from your query results. Imagine you have a table of customer orders, and you want to see a list of all the unique products ordered. Without `DISTINCT`, you might get multiple entries for the same product. Using `DISTINCT` ensures that each product appears only once in the result set. This is essential for tasks like generating reports, analyzing data trends, and creating summaries where you only need to see unique items. It's important to understand that `DISTINCT` operates on the entire row if you're selecting multiple columns, not just the specified column. If you want to see unique values from a specific column, you'll use `DISTINCT` with that column's name. For example, if you want to see unique customer names, you'd use `SELECT DISTINCT customer_name FROM customers`. This is a fundamental aspect of data manipulation in SQL, allowing you to focus on unique data points.