What is Brand Loyalty?

Brand loyalty refers to the consumers special attachment to a certain product. This is exhibited by the customers repeated purchase of a given product, despite there being other alternatives in the market. In other words, brand loyalty is where a customer repeatedly purchases a product from only one manufacturer, leaving out other suppliers brands. Brand loyalty is of value to businesses because repeated purchases generate higher revenues as well as customer referrals.

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Why is Brand Loyalty Important?

Note that apart from the repetitive purchase of a product from one supplier, loyalty can be demonstrated through other behaviors like word-of-mouth advocacy. This is where you tell others how good a product is and why they should continue using it instead of going for a substitute brand. Brand loyalty also exists where customers are willing to purchase a particular commodity at a higher price, despite there being other alternatives going at a lower price. Basically, those who are loyal to a certain brand dont buy a substitute brand even though the preferred brand is not available. Instead, they would rather search for their preferred brand from several stores. In case they dont find it, they would opt to forego the purchase until the stores are restocked with that particular brand. Note that the consumers decision to purchase is either conscious or unconscious. Nonetheless, it is highly dependent on trust that the brand accomplishes to the consumers. It is the belief and attitude of the consumers that make up a brand. Consumers always expect the brand to fulfill their emotional or physical needs in a way that is unique.

How Brand Loyalty Works [Example]

Businesses with an established brand name, usually operate in a highly competitive market, where there are both old and new rival products. To create and maintain particular brand loyalty, companies usually employ different strategies. For instance, the marketing department may closely keep track of consumers buying trends. They do this so that through customer service, they can be able to establish relationships between them and their customers. Generally, for a brand loyalty campaign to be termed as successful, it needs to address crucial market segment attributes.

Brand Loyalty Example

For instance, Apple has the strongest customer loyalty base following various reasons. Some of the reasons include:

• An effective brand strategy: The company ensures that as many people as possible have a passion for their products.
• Customer experience: The company has always ensured that customers have a good customer experience with their products.
• Continued innovation: They have always innovated in customer tech which has seen its customer ambitions.

In general, the Apple company has been able to experience several benefits from customer brand loyalty. For instance, Apple has experienced an increase in referral rate, retention rate, the share of wallet, and reduction in the marketing costs. 

How Important is Brand Loyalty?

There are many benefits of brand loyalty to businesses. Some of the obvious benefits are as explained below:

• Helps in Building a strong customer base

To succeed in the market, your business must be able to surpass its competitors to ensure that it attains a competitive edge. Brand loyalty is one tool that has continued to help businesses achieve this. When you have a customer brand loyalty, your business will experience the continuous purchase of your brand without considering things like high price or convenience. Customers who are loyal to a particular brand are not easily influenced. The probability of them to continue using a particular product or service will increase. Also, loyal customers mostly become brand ambassadors for manufacturers. Satisfied consumers will often spread brand awareness by referring new customers. By doing this, they provide the company with free marketing services. Brand loyalty helps the business to withstand a recession. This is because brand loyalists do not stop buying their favorite brand even amidst a recession.

• It gives businesses a competitive advantage

A company with strong brand loyalty always has a competitive advantage. It is the brand loyal customers who assist a company to go past its competitors, making it succeed in the marketplace.

• Leads to high sales

Also, brand loyalty helps businesses to increase their number of sales. When customers remain loyal in purchasing a certain commodity for a long time, businesses are able to sell many of those commodities. This is because it ensures long-term business sustainability. Again businesses are able to measure the quantity of their brands success through brand loyalty. In other words, it is a quantifiable measure of a business success. Generally, to nurture brand loyalty, you are required to establish a reward program. This will help to entice consumers to continue purchasing a certain product in order to accumulate points. The objective of doing this is to ensure that customers accumulate as many points as possible, which they can redeem later to get prizes or rewards.

How do you Maintain Brand Loyalty?

There are various ways in which a business can maintain brand loyalty. Some of these ways are explained below:

• Stay on top of trends

To maintain brand loyalty, ensure that you do not let your customers down. You need to continue delivering high-quality services and products. This ensures that customers stick with your brand because they have confidence in your products or services.

• Always ensure quality

To ensure that customers remain loyal to your brand, you have to continue meeting your customers quality expectations. Exceeding the value level of your product or services is what will make them keep coming back for more purchases.

• Listen to your customers

In business, there are bound to be some hitches here and there. Things cannot be perfect all the time. For this reason, it is essential that you be there for your customers in the event that things go wrong with your brand. You can do this by answering back their phone calls, respond to any queries customers left on your social media platforms. Assure them of the measures you are going to take in order to rectify the problem.

• Meet your Customer Anticipation

To continue earning customer loyalty, you need to go beyond your customers expectations. You have to anticipate the needs of your customers and ensure that they are adequately met so that you can earn their loyalty. For instance, you can ensure that your customers are fully covered by providing a lifetime warranty on your product. This will ensure that they remain loyal to your brand and at the same time, be able to attract new customers.

• Be there for your customers

Another way of ensuring customer loyalty is to ensure that you listen to your customers. Regardless of whether the feedback is negative or positive, you need to treat each piece of information with the utmost importance. Note that when you open up a dialogue between you and your customers, it will solidify the connection they have with your product. They may even turn out to be your biggest advocates because of the concern you always show them.

• Be True and Consistent

Being consistent is also paramount in ensuring that you maintain brand loyalty. Your customers rely on you to continue delivering the same quality services as well as products. By meeting this expectation, you will be able to ensure that their loyalty is retained.

• Check up on your customers

Another way to ensure that your customers remain loyal to your service or product is to establish long-term relationships. Make a regular follow up to check on your customers experience with your product or service. This will ensure that customers are always satisfied leading to brand loyalty.

Difference between Brand Loyalty and Customer Loyalty

Though brand and customer loyalty may appear the same, there are quite different from each other. Note that Brand loyalty is arrived at when a customer is satisfied with the experience a product or service is offering. On the other hand, customer loyalty is achieved where incentive programs, coupons, free offers warranties extension is provided to entice customers. All these make customers happy and are persuaded to come back to make more purchases. In a nutshell, customer loyalty is influenced by what is being offered. In this case, customers tend to go for what they think works well for them. Brand loyalty, on the other hand, is influenced by the experience customers have with the product or service. If the product is good and of high quality, customers tend to stick to this particular brand regardless of the price or convenience.

Related Topics

• What is Branding?
• Brand Image
• Brand Recognition
• Brand Identity
• Brand Awareness 
• What is Brand Loyalty?
• What is Brand Equity?
• What are Private Brands? 
• What is Brand Management
• What are Brand Advocates?
• What is a Brand Community?
• Brand Potential Index Definition
• Brand Extension