The Pitch: Buyers more committed to brands than ever

By JONATHAN DODD

In this column last week, Peter Doughty claimed that brand loyalty is as dead as a dodo. Fortunately, thousands of marketers and researchers in more than 100 countries have proof otherwise.

To be fair, Doughty is technically correct - brand loyalty is a dying concept. But he has missed the fact that brand loyalty's diminishing importance has been due to researchers' increasing ability to discern between behavioural brand loyalty and emotional brand commitment.

Brand loyalty is but a blunt tool in which repurchase likelihood is estimated by studying past purchases. Unsurprisingly, it's not that useful.

In contrast, brand commitment measures the degree to which a person feels committed to a given decision, be it the car they drive, the jeans they wear or even their preferred political party or religion.

Commitment is measured through an algorithm that accounts for:

* Satisfaction with one's brand(s).

* Attraction to the alternatives.

* Degree of ambivalence.

* The importance placed on the decision itself.

When these factors are combined to measure brand commitment, the value of that commitment is extremely clear.

Thousands of studies into brand commitment have shown repeatedly that customers who are emotionally committed to their brand are highly attractive as consumers.

They will spend more on that brand than others in the category; will be more resistant to competitors' discounting (if they even notice their chosen brand's competitors, which is less likely); will be more likely to be brand advocates; will be more tolerant of problems with their brand; will be more likely to stay with that brand over time; and, contrary to Doughty's claim that nobody would drive to another supermarket if his or her brand was out of stock, many brand-committed people do.

Many of New Zealand's biggest brands are using commitment as a key measure. I ask Doughty: if brand loyalty is dead, then how is its close cousin, brand commitment, such a strong predictor of customer retention and value?

When researchers re-interview 6000 beer drinkers a year later and find that those who had shown the strongest commitment to their beer brand were more than 400 per cent less likely to have switched than the least-committed, does that not prove that brand commitment exists?

Doughty claims that most products share the same performance parity and thus brand is of no consequence - but any researcher with a knowledge of consumer psychology will disagree.

In a busy world, the value of brands in easing purchase decisions and helping to reinforce consumers' identities has never been stronger.


* Jonathan Dodd works for market research company Research Solutions, which specialises in brand commitment.

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