The Death of Brand Loyalty
Wikipedia divides brand type into four categories:
• Being’ brands: emotionally confirms you are somebody
• ‘Becoming’ brands: aspirationally defines what you want to be
• 'Doing’ brands: functionally enables you to do something
• ‘Belonging’ brands: connects you with other people like you.
For companies like Sony, Coach, Target, and Starbucks, these categories are textbook. These merchants have spent the last decade building attitude brands in which their customers have come to live their lives by. However, that may be changing.
These brands have reported slow growth this year. Starbucks has even reported a drop in customer traffic of 1 percent. The overall slow-down seems as though customers are hesitant to spend money on their favorite brands.
I think an unlimited choice of merchants, both online and in-store, may be bringing a slow death to brand loyalty. Such companies may no longer automatically count on their customers to return to buy from them again and again. Instead, they’ll need to win them back each time customers are looking to buy. To some extent, that has always been true, but it has never been more true than today.
