Many of us have experiences with brands in our daily lives. Maybe we only buy a particular confection or soda versus a competitor that looks just as good and appears to offer many of the same features. Why?
Some of us may have memories of parents or relatives only choosing a detergent, car, or furniture manufacturer or dealer. Why? Is this brand preference or loyalty a thing and how does it compare with the past?
Brand loyalty is a major ideal in the business world and a key factor brand managements take into process. Brand loyalty is a consumer trait in which the consumer is committed and dedicated to a particular brand. Here, the consumer is dedicated to a fault that despite the conditions of the brand: be it change of environment, trends, inflation in price or otherwise, a consumer will forever purchase from that brand. Practically, if a consumer, let's say Nancy wants to buy a lipstick, Ruby woos. If Nancy has a brand loyalty to Mac. Even if getting the lipstick means crossing seven seas, sitting in the traffic for four hours or travelling to another continent to get it, Nancy would do all of that because she is loyal to the MAC brand, not even the price can stop her, no matter how expensive it is , she'll rather get MAC than any other products.
Brand loyalty means trust and trust is very important in business because it eventually leads to having long standing customers. We see this (brand loyalty) happen a lot in diverse business sectors, which includes but is not limited to the: Â fashion sector, education sector, beauty, food and drinks industry, automobile, technology etc. There are various factors that influence brand loyalty. This ranges from quality, price range, customer service, etc. But is brand loyalty weaker or stronger today?
In my opinion, this is totally a personal question and an individual thing because we all have diverse preferences as individuals. But before now, brand loyalty was top notch, you would see that an individual who wanted to shop clothes had their most preferred brands: Gucci, Versace and when shopping, would go to their stores or look forward to finding their pieces in other stores. In these cases, you'll find the wardrobe of such an individual draped with just Gucci and Versace, it was that deep. But now, because of the internet coupled with the fact that anything could be one click away, most people don't usually take brand loyalty seriously. People are just consciously aware of these big brands, E:g : Coca Cola, Gucci, Channel, Versace, Benz, Pepsi, Apple, Microsoft office, HP, Sony, Canon, Lamborghini, etc. but are not really committed to them as things are different in our world today, especially with the viral pop of trends.
Brand loyalty does exist but sparsely and weaker compared to times before now. In conclusion, brand loyalty is weaker today compared to past times, which is my opinion but what is yours? Is brand loyalty stronger now or weaker today and what is your take on it?
