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Discussion on: Is Brand Loyalty still important?

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ujjwal_poudel

Kotler & Keller (2016), in their book Marketing Management, brand loyalty is a customer purchasing products and services from the same brand over and over rather than changing to other brands. It consists of a commitment by a consumer’s to repurchase or continue to use one brand. It is more than simply repurchasing. Businesses may provide a customer loyalty programs that keeps customers coming back. Also, the customers enjoy the rewards and perks of being a loyal customer. The Brand loyalty is key factor in term of customer retention. Organizations need to identify the loyal behaviours that most deserve explicit recognition, reward, and investment (Schrage, 2015). In most cases, the loyalty of a buyer is towards a particular product but some of the brands also have their own loyal followers.

Take Coke for example, Coke has been selling their product from centuries ago and yet they seem to find large share of market today. This is because; they have been targeting their customer from one generation to another. Coke is way ahead of time. They are targeting the next generation every time they launch their product.

For automobile example, Toyota is a brand which had strong brand representation since its inception. For them importance of brand positioning and brand loyalty is pivotal. That’s why such organization survived and performed well financially for such long period of time and became market leader convincingly.

The examples of Coke and Toyota clearly illustrate that true loyalty doesn’t just serve and preserve valuable customer relationships; it creates and inspires more valuable customers. Loyalty is a mutual investment, not just an exchange. That’s why; improving the loyalty of bargain hunters rarely delivers sustainable value. In previous years i.e. 10 to 15 year back brand loyalty was important for them and still in today’s intense competitive market it is core component of success.

In fact today, people have become more conscious than ever. At past, people had few options so they simply were found experimenting one product after another until they meet the consensus to stick to one particular brand. So simply it was an easy brand loyalty. But today to be loyal to brand is as competitive as ever. Every product is a good quality product and different to one another. This has eventually led people to become more open and knowledgeable about the products when they buy as ever. People buy goods online but they want the best one. And once they buy the product they become obsessed with those products. This is why; holding on to customers is not a matter of continually adapting to changing needs in order to remain the rational or emotional best fit. It about helping customers avoid has to make yet another choice (Lafley & Martin, 2017). To sum up, brand loyalty is the core and value deriving component of most of the company as it was 10 to 15 year back.

References

Kotler, P., & Keller, K. L. (2016). Marketing Management . Boston: Pearson.

Lafley, A. G., & Martin, R. L. (2017). Customer loyalty is overrated. In hrd.org . Retrieved from hbr.org/2017/01/customer-loyalty-i... 1

Schrage, M. (2015). Why your customer loyalty program isn’t working. In hrd.org . Retrieved from hbr.org/2015/03/why-your-cu