Download Me: “Okay, let`s get serious then, how about $1500.”

Redefining Brand Loyalty:
The Emotional and Behavioral Aspects of Loyalty
Loyalty is a very tricky subject especially within the context of marketing. It’s often discussed but largely
misunderstood. Some scholars such as Dr. Byron Sharp of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute don’t think it’s
reasonable to assume we can affect brand loyalty. In fact, many don’t believe building loyalty is the purpose
of marketing at all. Yes, loyalty is on the decline, but this does not mean that it’s out of reach for marketers.
To deny loyalty as a goal undermines a key aspect of what marketing should be about.
Today, marketing’s sole purpose is to generate transactions that lead to the sale of goods and services. It is
this transactional mentality that drives companies, brands, and retailers to resort to cheap manipulation
through price promotion, that in the end, is anything but cheap. But what if marketing were about building
deeply emotional relationships that are then leveraged to sell goods and services? While this may seem like
a small shift in words, it has serious implications for how we should define brand loyalty.
Loyalty is often defined as an obligation or commitment (something you promised to do) or the active result
of love and trust. In other words, loyalty is seen as a behavior, which aligns with how we define it in marketing.
We measure brand loyalty based on past or future 3, 6, 12-month purchases or willingness to recommend
our brand to others. We understand it as a series of actions that form a buying pattern favorable to our brand,
and we assume that with the right approach and tactics, it will continue in the future. But is this the correct
definition of brand loyalty? In order to answer this question, we must first understand loyalty in the context of
interpersonal relationships.
There is a simple exercise we use with audiences that makes it clear we’re defining loyalty incorrectly. We
randomly select a volunteer from the audience we’ve never met (let’s call him David) and give him the
following scenario.
I’m moving this weekend and I need help hauling boxes and furniture. Based on what you
know about me (remember, David and I just met), would you help me move?
Here is how the exercise goes from there.
David:
Me:
David:
Me:
David:
Me:
David:
Me:
David:
“No way!”
“I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
“No.”
“How about dinner at a nice steak house?”
“Still no.”
“Okay, let’s get serious then, how about $1500.”
“You’re getting closer.”
“Let’s get this done, $3000?
“We have a deal!”
Me:
David:
Me:
David:
Me:
David:
Me:
David:
Me:
David:
“Great, so you will help me move if I pay you $3000?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Do you have a favorite brother or sister?”
“Yes, my brother Michael.”
“If Michael were the one asking for your help, would you help him?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Would he have to pay you $3000?”
“Of course not.”
“Why do I have to pay you $3000 but not Michael?”
“Because he’s family.”
The reason Michael would not have to pay David $3000 but I would, comes down to a difference in loyalty.
David is loyal to Michael in relationship, meaning emotionally, while David is loyal to me behaviorally. If
David requires $3000 every time I need to move, can I really call him loyal?
Let’s assume an alternate scenario in which I know in June I’ll be moving in December. In this situation, I’m
going to split the $3000 into two accounts of $1500 each. Knowing I will need help in a six months, I start
building a relationship with David using the money from one of the accounts. I take him to dinners, golfing,
and to a few ball games; in other words, building an emotional relationship. Chances are, at the end of that
$1500, David will be willing to help me move with no additional payment, saving me the other $1500. This is
the approach to loyalty we need in marketing.
“What distinguishes loyalty is that it is deeply affective and not primarily
rational. (…) The emotional character of loyalty also sets it apart from
obligation. If obligation is rule driven, loyalty is motivated by the entire
personality of the person…”
—Judith N. Shklar, Political Theorist, Harvard University
The point of this exercise is to show that loyalty is an emotion that triggers behavior, it is not solely a
behavior. It’s a social construct we pulled into marketing, the definition of which we changed to suit our own
purpose. As we explore the need to evolve the very definition and mission of marketing in order for brands
to be successful in the future, we must also return the definition of loyalty back to its social roots.
“Consider the construct of ‘brand loyalty’. It means one thing when it refers
to a person’s repeatedly buying a product - behavior that could simply
reflect habit or passivity. It means something totally different when it refers
to a person’s going out of his way to find a specific brand or deferring a
purchase until he finds it, a behavior that suggests dedication.”
—Gerald Zaltman, How Customers Think
To best accomplish this, we must better understand the five key aspects of loyalty in a social context and
how they translate to brand relationships. As you can see in Table 1, each of the key aspects has a direct
and easily applicable correlation to building brand loyalty; therefore, we should approach building brand
loyalty almost exactly as we build loyalty in a personal relationship.
TABLE 1
In both cases, collaborative interactions form an emotional bond that keeps the relationship stable no
matter the tenor of the interactions – negative or positive - that might arise over time. If marketers spent
more time and resources on building emotional loyalty upfront, then we wouldn’t have to spend so much
money trying to trigger behavioral loyalty on the back end. The stability of this type of bond anchors the
brand, allowing it to better transcend the ups and downs of a relationship with consumers and shoppers.
“It could help to conceptualize that loyalty is a connection emotion which
operates to link [people].”
—James Conner, The Sociology of Loyalty
Just because brand loyalty has proven elusive to most marketers does not mean we should abandon all
hope. In returning loyalty to its original social roots, marketers can go about achieving brand loyalty more
successfully. Rather than focusing on behaviors, brands and retailers need to keep their efforts and dollars
focused on developing emotional loyalty. The more emotionally loyal your consumer, the less money you will
have to spend to get the shopper to purchase your brand. Just because you have a loyal shopper does not
mean you have a loyal consumer, but if your consumer is loyal, your shopper most likely will be as well.
Christopher Brace founded Syntegrate Consulting in 2006, and as CEO leads all client projects. He can be reached at
[email protected].
Carlos Pinero is a Marketing Assistant at Syntegrate Consulting and leads the company’s social and digital marketing and
assists on client projects. He can be reached at [email protected].
Syntegrate Consulting is an insight-based strategic consulting firm that specializes in helping clients build better brands,
communications, and go-to-market strategies that create new value in the marketplace through syntegration: the bringing
together of dissimilar research, knowledge, insights, and people to create something completely new.
Please visit our website at www.syntegrate-consulting.com.
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