Strong brands always translate into strong sales but strong sales doesn’t always mean you have a strong brand.

i buy at a local superstore because its the closest to me. there is a bigger, better superstore in my vicinity and yet i seldom go there since its further. i even like that other superstore better than the one i shop at. but what use is that particular superstore’s brand if it cannot make me invest the extra effort in changing my habitual purchasing tendencies?

re this comment of yours, “Many companies are under the perception that because their brand is selling well and they have repeat customers they have a strong brand but this is often not true.”

what is the point of a strong brand if it does not translate into sales?

Another very interesting question – and something that I honestly cannot answer. I can only surmise that something may happen – but what and the shape it will take is impossible to know.

However, I don’t think that Loyalty is dead. This exercise made me reconsider the extreme nature of that statement (and I will blog this tomorrow with other lessons learned). I do believe that we are replacing emotional attachment and loyalty, which used to exist until about 10-15 years ago, with emotional loyalty. And the emotional loyalty CAN have different levels, can be measured, and can be manipulated.

This was a very interesting experiment…

This very same exercise, defining value from both sides, is one that I am undertaking as a research project. I very well believe that value will replace loyalty and satisfaction as the metric to follow in the near future.

I was hoping you would do my work for me

More to come on the subject, in the near future.

If the 60s-90s generation was also adopting similar behavioral pattern for loyalty in their teens (merely going after what is ‘cool’), but went on to appreciate loyalty in their mature years – then won’t in all probability Gen Y follow the same pattern as well ? Currently their love for iPod might be just a ‘follow-the-cool’ fad, but would there be a behavioral shift and move towards understanding and appreciating ‘Emotional Loyalty’ as they move out of their teen psyche ?

Which again makes me think that possibly ‘emotional loyalty’ will never be dead but will be spread over shortened time span in a customer’s lifetime.

I agree with you that if loyal customers don’t buy again or at least generate new customers (referral)then what is the use, but just because someone continues to buy it does not mean they are loyal.

We had a heated discussion about Habitual Purchasing vs. Brand Loyalty a few weeks ago on #brandchat on twitter you can check the recap out at http://yourbrandchat.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/aug-12th-brandchat-recap/

Many companies are under the perception that because their brand is selling well and they have repeat customers they have a strong brand but this is often not true.

My postition is that Brand strength comes when people stick their neck out and recommend your product/service to others. (NPS)

If the companies hope to have a truly strong brand, they must move their core customers to a point where they advocate for the brand (evangelizing regularly and making suggestions for brand improvement.

I would also like to reiterate the point that if the company is not loyal to their customers and does not advocate for their customers then why should their customers be loyal advocates for them.

That need for loyalty by the company goes the same for employees who are the people who deliver the brand. Yet most companies have very little loyalty for their employees and then wonder why they can’t get their brand delivered properly.

Most companies talk a good game when it comes to loyalty but few actually care about it. All they really want is people to keep buying their products. This is why the companies who do get value loyalty and advocacy have such dominate brands.

I looked up a couple of definitions for Loyalty before embarking on this fool’s quest, just to be on the safe side, and I believe that faith is intrinsically related to it. Most definitions you will find talk about a “faithful commitment” or a “faith in the outcome” of an interaction.

I think that it is quite interesting to use that word in the realm of loyalty. I have said, and maintained, for a very long time that feelings, emotions, sentiments, etc. cannot be accurately measured. and that was before i even had to start talking about faith!

Thanks for a great comment, I appreciate it.

Thanks for participating. I think you hit on an issue in this discussion that we have not discussed much, but it is valuable to bring up.

What is the use of loyalty? you say it has to be repeat business. I would tend to agree with that, it should translate into repeat business (And that is why NPS attempts to correlate promoters with repeat business, or walletshare, or increased revenue-per-account, or similar).

But is all repeat business to be considered loyalty? That is the question that I would love to explore more. My original statement is that not, all repeat business is not loyalty — there must be other variables to consider it loyal business.

What do you think? (or anyone else for that matter)

I like your Starbucks example a lot, since it is one of those things that baffle me forever. I replied to Sid’s comment below with an example from a presentation I saw the last couple of days, and of course i don’t have saved anywhere, that talked about symbols of status, societal trends and patterns, and habits being recognized as loyalty by organizations and how wrong that was.

I think Starbucks falls into that category. The economic downturn hurt Starbucks severely mainly because their “loyal” customers did not see the value being returned for their hard-earned money. Their loyalty was not rational (as you say, you cannot explain it) but was derived from either habits or status symbols (their cup and log is one of the most recognized in the world!). Despite all the good and flavorful experiences they could have offered, their price point was just a tad higher than people expected to pay for similar items elsewhere, and it showed in their decreased revenues.

I am not saying that there are no Starbucks loyalists, all brands have them, but my statement from the beginning (if you read yesterday’s entry on loyalty that can be bought) is that organizations should focus one emotional loyalty as the only one they can control and that they can implement.

I agree with you that loyalty has a whole slew of reasons to be or cease to be, and that is why I so resent NPS and other attempts to measure it and control it.

Thanks for a great, thought-inducing comment (btw, I am getting a headache just participating in this).