The Concept of Brand Loyalty

The concept of brand loyalty is not very difficult to understand, some people become loyal to a brand just because they think that there is no other better brand in the market, while the others think that the services offered by their favorite brand comes at a reasonable price which can never be provided by any other brand. There might be many reasons for a person being too loyal towards one brand and this paper will throw light upon those reasons.

Fundamentals of Marketing

Consumer buying behavior is extremely important in understanding how a brand becomes a loyal brand. Consumer buying behavior predominantly depends on the level of involvement in the purchase decision and that further depends on intensity of interest in the product. There is many a product that is high involvement purchases, like most of the high priced goods are high involvement purchases. These products may have different kinds of risks associated with them, as they are high involvement products. These risks can be Personal, Social, or Economic. These factors determine the kinds of Consumer buying behavior, which are Routine response behavior, limited decision making, extensive decision making and impulse buying. Routine Response or Programmed Behavior is the kind of consumer behavior that deals with buying low-priced products that are day-to-day use items, need very little search and decision effort, and are purchased almost automatically. Examples include soft drinks, snack, milk etc. Limited Decision Making is another category under which one needs to obtain information about unfamiliar brands in a familiar product category. This requires a moderate amount of time for information gathering. Examples may include Clothes, as one knows the product class but not the brand Extensive Decision Making or Complex high involvement behavior includes products that are unfamiliar, expensive, and infrequently bought. They may have a high degree of economic, performance, and psychological risk. Examples of such products include cars, homes, computers, education. Such products generally make a buyer spend a lot of time seeking information and deciding. The last category of buying behavior includes Impulse Buying, which needs no planning or thinking before going on to buy the product. All these factors have to be considered by a company if they have realistic plans of making their brand a loyal brand to customers.

Before understanding brand loyalty, it is very important to understand what a brand exactly means. “In an age where products are bought, rather than sold (think about it…) buyers make their choices according to brand identity, relying on the endorsement of a product that is provided by the brand name. A brand offers a form of guarantee, a set of readymade values attached to a product that we too can adopt upon purchase” (What is a Brand? 2008).

Brand loyalty is the sole aim of many companies because all the companies aim at promoting their product and if more and more people become loyal to the brand of the company that would justify what the company would want because this whole process will get the company new customers and once if a customer becomes loyal to the brand of the company, the name of the brand will be suggested to many other people too who are in touch with the person who is loyal to that particular brand. If a customer commits to purchase the same brand again and again that’s when it is called brand loyalty or in other words when a customer shows loyalty towards a particular brand. Brand loyalty is seen as the greatest asset which a company can have. “Brands that consumers generally buy from the same manufacturer repeatedly over time rather than buying from multiple suppliers within the category. It also refers to the degree to which a consumer consistently purchases the same brand within a product class” (Brand Loyalty, 2008).

Conclusion

The ultimate aim of marketing is brand loyalty, which is very difficult to attain. A company should work towards developing a brand that is extraordinary and at the same time affordable by the consumers only then can that companies brand will become loyal to the customers. There should be research laboratories to provide cutting-edge technology to the consumers, just like Nike has a Research Laboratory which aims at developing products with superior technology. Only a brand that stands out becomes a loyal brand and a company has to continuously work towards this.

References

  1. Brand Loyalty. In Bit Pipe. Web.
  2. What Is a Brand? In Media Know All.
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