Brand Loyalty is the biased decision making behavior (Ishak Ghani) of customers while purchasing a product relying on the brand experience and commitments. (Maheshwari, Lodorfos, Jacobsen, 2014) Customers are attached to certain brands after repetitive engagement with the brands. The trust over the product leads a customer to be loyal towards a brand.

For example: In 80’s and 90’s people in India used to remember Bajaj while purchasing or even talking about scooter. Even now most of my friends remember Nescafe whenever we talk about coffee.

Brand loyalty is an important factor today because:

Reduces consumer perceived risk: With the growing market and choice in products, customers have different risk perception (Functional, Financial, Health, Time) when it comes to purchasing any kind of product. Effective Positing of the brand in market, living up to the brand commitments, establishing relationship with customers, and making customers satisfied with the service can helps in reduction of customer perceived risk.
Reduces the switching cost: The switching cost vary with consumer behavior towards the product. (Chen Hitt) A good branding comes with customers experience and the commitment with the product. If customer is dasatified with our product, then it’s predicatabe that they will switch to another brand with similar products and we will loose our customers. By retaining our customer’s we would then save 5 times less cost than attracting new coustomers. Bia and Co, says, if they can increase their customer retantion then company’s profit will be increased by 75%(Lawrence, 1990) This explains how customer reatintion is directly linked with the revunue generation.

Thus, a company should invest intially on creating a brand which is valuable to customers. Once the brand is established, the company has to consisitenly live upon it’s brand promise. In this competiative market, customers have more choice and risks as well, the brand message should address the percieved risk while positioning the market to our segmented customers.

References

Chen, P.-Y. (., Hitt, L. M. (n.d.). Switching Cost and Brand Loyalty in Electronic Markets: Evidence from On-Line Retail Brokers . Philadelphia: Wharton eBusiness Initiative .

Ishak, F., Ghani, N. H. (n.d.). A Review of the Literature on Brand Loyalty and Customer Loyalty. Sintok, Kedah: Universiti Utara Malaysia.

Lawrence, A. (1990). Five Customer Retention Tips for Entrepreneurs. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexlawrence/2012/11/01/five-customer-retention-tips-for-entrepreneurs/#12c45ab5e8df

Maheshwari, V., Lodorfos, G., Jacobsen, S. (2014). Determinants of Brand Loyalty: A Study of the Experience-Commitment-Loyalty Constructs. International Journal of Business Administration, 5(6), 13-23.