A refrigerator versus a cooker. The fridge is just for storing
things, while the cooker is for creating things – brand awareness
and the significance of branding for cookers is far greater than
it is for refrigerators.
A bed versus a hi-fi. A bed is for sleeping, and is covered up
for most of its life. The hi-fi is for entertaining, even for
performing, and is on show to all those to be entertained. Bed
manufacturers go to great efforts to brand their products, but I
challenge you to name three bed brands in the space of time you
can name six brands of hi-fi.
The brand manager wishing to increase brand loyalty will do
well to examine the relative significance of the brand, and the
number and nature of the customer interactions. If they can
increase those interactions then they have a good chance of
increasing the brand’s significance and so the customer’s loyalty.
The brands that inspire the most loyalty are those that are
most significant to the customer as a result of their high level of
involvement and the impact on their ‘hot spots’. Motor cars
have a lot going for them in this regard, involving the customer
through a long cycle of interactions, from anticipation, to selec-
tion, to purchase, to use, and even on to memory of that use.
Reduce the number of interactions, reduce the significance to
the customer, and loyalty gets harder to win. Some purchases
just make it plain difficult to be loyal.
Relative spend
Having considered the significance of the purchase, let us now
link that to a second variable – the amount of money spent on
the purchase relative to all other expenditure. These two vari-
ables form the two axes of a matrix shown in Figure 4.1. I have
then suggested some items that I would put in each box of the
matrix, based on my own perceptions and expenditure.
You may disagree with my positioning; perhaps for you baked
beans are a vital purchase and getting the wrong brand is a
minor disaster – perhaps you have children… and this is the
whole point about understanding consumer expectations,
The brand as a mark of loyalty
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