'Trust and expectation define brand loyalty'

In an age when brands give their all to retain their customer base, especially at a time when the world is facing one of the biggest crises in history, the question arises on the loyalty of the customer. To address this raging concern and probe deeper into the matter, the Indian Brand Conclave 2021 held a panel discussion where panellists deliberated on the topic of ‘Is Brand Loyalty Eroding?’

The panellists comprised of noted names from the industry including Rahul Gandhi, CMO, iD Fresh Foods; Pradnya Popade, Head - Marketing Communications, Samsonite South Asia; Ram Suresh Akella, Executive Director – Marketing, Maruti Suzuki India Limited; Dr. Ipsita Chatterjee, Head - Innovation Development & Brand Strategy, Lotus Herbals; Ruchika Gupta, CMO, Luminous Power Technologies; Siddharth Dabhade, Managing Director - India & SAARC, MiQ. The session was chaired by Prasad Shejale, Founder & CEO, Logicserve Digital.

Shejale began the session with a key question – how does one define brand loyalty. Gupta shared her view on the same. “I have always believed that we are first consumers and then marketers. So what is loyalty to me in my own life is going to be driving brand loyalty for consumers as well. And I think the biggest foundation of loyalty has always been trust. It needs to be a brand I trust; it needs to be recommended,” she said and added, “An expert recommendation, for example, forms a huge part of trust. Overall brand reputation – do they do good things, whether it is through CSR perspectives or through quality products. These two pillars for me remain constant. Yes, the manifestations may change – the media could change, the way I access it could change, even temporary blips in usage could change as well, but is the brand eventually winning my loyalty? A brand that I trust will always remain the same.”

Akella chipped in and said, “A brand is much more than just a logo or the product or the service. It’s an organic thing; a community in itself. Most of us as marketers are tempted to view brand loyalty in terms of the financial transactions that a customer has with the brand when they buy something. But in reality, something far more profound is happening. The fact is that customers just don’t buy a product with currency but they are actually buying into a brand with their emotional currency – they are investing their trust and faith, and also their expectation of satisfaction from the products. I feel that trust and expectation are what actually define brand loyalty and do so differently across different categories and different industries.”

The conversation moved on to the raging question – is brand loyalty eroding? Gandhi came forward to share his opinion on the topic. “If you consider the 20-month context you are referring to, the answer that I have in my head is ‘no’. But I want to qualify that answer a bit. It is actually category-specific. So there were categories that were affected by Covid and categories that were not. When I say affected, I mean health and hygiene, food and nutrition, general sanitation – these were categories that were core and were revolving around the Covid phenomenon. Now what happens is that in categories which were affected by the pandemic like food or sanitation, in which Dettol or Savlon were playing in, – in those categories brand loyalty shot up. And if you look at the data of these categories, you will see that the market leaders have actually consolidated their positions,” he elaborated.

Dabhade shared his take on the subject and said, “The biggest thing that we have seen is that digitalisation has really accelerated in the past two years. There is fragmentation and brand loyalty, overall, in many categories, has been eroding because there are so many choices that have come up and I am not speaking from the perspective of the pandemic, but according to what has been happening since the last decade or so. Also, consumerism has increased and a plethora of brands has come in and there are so many choices for a consumer. So obviously brand loyalty will go down to an extent.”

He added saying, “I think we are going through a tectonic shift in the media landscape as well. And that is something all of us will have to keep a watch on and see if we are being relevant in terms of channels for the consumers.”

Dr Chatterjee spoke about how brand loyalty has shifted and changed over a period of time and how categories play an important role. “Before that I want to talk about the choice overload that exists today in the market. We have so much choice overload. It is believed that a human brain can make only 150 meaningful associations or relationships. So there is a kind of choice overload and there is digital making fatigue that exists in the market and that’s why brand loyalty is not eroding per se but it is being now categorised as three forms of loyalists, namely the heart, the head and the hand,” she pointed out and continued to elaborate. “For example, a heart loyalist would, in the last 20 months, echo and invest in brands which resonated with his sentiments, with philanthropy and also look towards mindful experiences from the brand. Similarly, the head loyalists would probably go for lucrative offers. So, in totality, if you ask me the question is brand loyalty eroding, then ‘no’. For across categories, it might be different but beauty had emerged as a beautiful winner.”

With the subject of brand loyalty comes the question of the brands’ response to new consumers. Popade shared her views from the perspective of the brand she is associated with – Samsonite. “It’s [Samsonite] a 111-year-old brand so every now and then there have been new consumers. Today, consumers have holistic views of the value and that value is derived from the tangible and intangible benefits of the brand. Samsonite has been at the forefront of innovation – from the upright bag to the two-wheels to the spinners and the latest fingerprint locking system to the in-built weighing system. The whole interaction needs to be happening with today’s consumer time and again, and that interaction can happen through anyway because it’s the digital world and 150 million consumers are buying online. So how do we start interacting with the consumers when there is complete ease of buying and convenience is given first priority? When we started, we began with mapping the non-linear journey of the consumer. There is a model called See Think Do Care model for the digital platform but we thought of adapting that to all multi-channel platforms. We also launched our direct-to-consumer website in the pandemic because we saw that the other platforms were not pushing the premium products.”