What Makes A Brand Loyalty?

Social media has become an influential ground for consumers to share their opinions about a company’s brand and products. In addition, it helps in having a strong brand that produces positive relations and distinguish the brand from competitors, is a critical component for effective marketing. According to Dahlén and Lange (2009) “the quality of the product is not the evident factor when it comes to purchasing a product, the deciding factor depends on how the brand is perceived” (Para. 1). This demonstrates the importance of incorporating social media as a tool to promote brands, allow for interactions, and customer satisfaction by engaging with customers more frequently for feedbacks or reviews. Thus create an opportunity for the company to show its devotion to their customers, and initiate good reputation, which can increase sales. In other words, social media has the ability to upsurge the awareness for businesses as well as the brand.

Firstly, to start with it is important to understand what is Customer loyalty? Loyalty can be explained as an attitudinal or behavior. According to Mark, Grahame & Kathy (2003): “Loyalty is something that consumers may demonstrate their interest to brands, services, stores, product categories. Here, we use the term customer loyalty as opposed to brand loyalty; this is to emphasize that loyalty is a feature of people, rather than something inherent in brands (Mark, Grahame & Kathy, 2003).” To explain it further Customer loyalty is something where consumer or customer likes or prefer to buy

Thus, companies seek to strengthen customer loyalty. Brand loyalty is considered to tilt the consumer to purchase the package / product specific brand (Jacoby and Chestnut, 1978). Later, Oliver (1997) defined loyalty as "a deeply held commitment to REBUY or repatronize preferred product / service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same-brand or same brand set purchasing, despite situational influences and marketing activities, which would result in causing switching behavior "(p. 34). This conceptual definition covers two different aspects of loyalty: the behavioral. This is consistent with an integrated conceptual framework proposed by Dick and Basu (1994), that customer loyalty is regarded as a "power relationship between the relative position of the individual and repeat

Over the decades there were tremendous amount of challenges for every business. Customers have more knowledge, they have more options, and they have higher expectations. Customers are more informed with the humungous development in technology. Having more options in front of them, expectations has surpassed in retail industry. Loyalty is a customer having faith that your organization’s product or services offered is the best for them. It is the process of tapping the buying pattern of customers in a store based on their preferences. Customer loyalty is significant because it is economical to retain the old customers rather than acquiring new customers. So, organizations employ loyalty programs which reward customers for their repeat business.

We cannot deny how big of an impact social media has on our lives now, not only on people but businesses too. It has opened a whole new door to the business world and given them a big opportunity to interact and attract a larger amount of customers. It’s given us a new and faster way of communication by exchanging pictures, stories, news, blogs, online discussions, etc. In exchange businesses have benefited by a long shot just by the click of a button. With the help of the Internet a company no longer is dependent on a particular customer base to survive because now it can reach out to a worldwide audience within seconds. It’s imaginable the countless business attributes of all social media to this day and still is growing. Social media

The use of social media has a very wide variety of advantages and disadvantages for companies. In essence it’s an extremely cheap way to reach consumers, and help them develop a brand perception. Companies can use it to hit a wide audience, and show them about a new product, or deal going on. They can also use social media to develop conversations with their consumers. This can positively shape thoughts and ideas about the brand. Also companies can use analytic services figure out the demographics of who is interested in their

Retention: One of the primary reasons for most loyalty programs is o retain the loyal customers by appreciating them and the business they generate for the company by making them feel special and good about their association with the company.

U.S. consumers hold 3.3 billion memberships in customer loyalty programs, the 2015 COLLOQUY Loyalty Census shows, a 26% increase over the number of memberships reported in COLLOQUY’s last census study in 2013 (Colloquy, 2015) With loyalty programs established this helps to generate a repeat customers which drives profits and promises future revenue. Consumers need an incentive to purchase a product at a certain place. When Loyalty programs are in place it helps the consumer relate to the product and funnels them towards the product in which they feel that they are apart of. They can build exclusive points and incentives when products are purchased and are then able to use those rewards points at a later time to purchase more goods or even get a portion of the cash back.

Brands - we see them everywhere. Nowadays advertisement has become so common, that it is normal for us to see promotions all around from the moment we get up from bed and up until we go to sleep. We do like some of those advertised brands, and in order buy their production and stay loyal to them. However, some of them we do not and just try to ignore their output. Nevertheless, is it possible to influence people through loyalty programs and why do people choose to stay loyal in the first place? Some believe that companies want to make their customers happy and money is not the main goal for them, but I reckon that it is profitable for companies to have loyal and dependents consumers and it is the main reason of why now we have loyalty programs in our society.

In order to generate customer loyalty, customer satisfaction is of utmost important. According to Oliver (1999), customer loyalty was defined as a buyer’s deeply committed and stick to a product, service, brand or organization consistently in the future regardless of new situations or competition that induce the switching process. Encouraging customers to come back again is the most critical part in every business. Repeated customers are the source of profits that allows business to grow and success. Some of the examples of customer loyalty are:

Customer will regularly buy from a repertoire of goods and services within a given field. Therefore customer loyalty programmes may engender behavioural loyalty but they may not guarantee attitudinal loyalty when a competitive brand develops its own loyalty schemes or the customers cashes in his or her rewards (Cook, 1997). Wal-Mart emphasizes that keep a good relationship

There are many conditions that influence the factors, which are crucial in stimulating brand loyalty successfully. These, a/o., include the market share, competition, price, brand switching costs, number of substitutes, and so on. However, less obvious, but still, very important factors include the ones proposed by De Ruyter and Bloemer in their article about

The term “Brand Loyalty” also called as “Customer Loyalty” has been in the business industry since a very long time as a model to be used in conducting business. But it wasn’t until the mid to late 1900’s that the term was actually given its due importance by making it a vital part of advertising and marketing. The concept of marketing evolved substantially from being focused on sales of a product to having Customer satisfaction to be its focal point. Studies further revealed that there was a positive correlation between customer satisfaction and Brand Loyalty.

Our text explains that “customer loyalty is the degree to which a customer will select a particular brand when a purchase from that product category is being considered,” (Levens, 2012, p. 72). This loyalty is present in the relationship that a brand has engaged with the customer, and the resulting attachment the brand has with a consumer (Levens, 2012, p. 72). It is the loyal customer that is most highly sought after by companies, in order to generate the most positive brand image, retain the customer, for the ultimate goal of generating the greatest profit (Levens, 2012, p. 72). The most important goal, other than retaining the loyal customer and persuading others to join them, is evaluating the important customer relationship to determine greatest profitability (Levens, 2012, p. 72).

With the passage of time, loyalty programs have been extended and also utilizing showcasing instruments for attracting more customer loyalty. Towards any business or specific organization, client’s loyalty should be supposed and remunerated. Loyalty programs assured the customers that with respect their money invested they will get more rewards and with time they become a part of an organization.