Brand Loyalty: The truth!

According to many sales experts, brand loyalty has died a death. We don’t believe them.

In a recent article on branding and marketing megasite Inc., it was proclaimed that consumers were no longer interested in brands. What customers want now is products; better, cheaper, more exotic, more impressive products.

In the article, it is claimed that the web has diluted consumers’ interest in brands thanks to:

1. Easy to find reviews for any product you could imagine
2. The realisation via the web that most products are made from identical component parts with branding added later

We weren’t sure about this outlook. Of course the way consumers react to and interact with brands has changed dramatically over the years, especially since the advent of the internet, but have people really stopped responding to brands?

Another article by our friends over at ReferralCandy shows they don’t quite agree either. They responded to Inc. via the points they had raised focused on hero products.

“Brand loyalty will be around as long as brands are deliberate about making great products.” – Visa, ReferralCandy

It’s true.

The reason consumers love brands is down to a complex mixture of marketing, previous experiences, recommendations from friends, research and impulse. It’s not just branding for products that matter to people either – look at the way shoppers choose supermarkets. Some choose for the cheapest produce or the best value for money, but most choose supermarkets due to familiarity, because they trust the brand, because they like the brand’s image or because they believe the brand to offer better quality products.

We would go as far as to say it is unfair to say that consumers don’t care about brands. It implies that they don’t know or care what they are buying.

ReferralCandy say, “Loyalty itself feels like a bit of an archaic concept. While people might be loyal ‘in behaviour’, it does feel a lot more natural to ask “What brands do you trust?”  and we can see their point. However, how do we differentiate between those two words? Here is our interpretation:

Loyalty: Showing a love and/or attachment to a brand through a feeling of duty and tradition.

Trust: Putting faith in a brand to do what you deem as right for the consumer (and in an increasing number of cases, the producers and the world.)

Is there really a black and white choice between the two? Or, more likely, do consumers actually choose percentages of each to make their decisions?

We as may no longer have the luxury of consumers who choose products simply out of blind loyalty to a brand which matches their ideals, however we do still have the ability to change the way consumers feel about our products using our brands. And, if customers are more likely to re-purchase products based on good experiences they’ve had with a brand in the past, isn’t this technically classed as loyalty to some degree?

Food for thought indeed!

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