Long-Term Brand Loyalty

A casual conversation about the longevity of marriage got me to thinking about the longevity of brand loyalty.  I spent some time speaking with, or rather listening to, a man who was very pessimistic about the longevity of marriage.    He had just been through his third divorce.  He was twenty-seven years old.  Naturally, it made me wonder if he had any idea what “marriage” meant – he had some expectation of what it ought to mean, but was obviously not very devoted to the concept.

Statistics on Marriage and Divorce

I’ve long been skeptical of the pessimistic statistics about marriage – that over half end in divorce.  Census statistics support that figure, but it seems a bit dodgy because a person who remains married is counted only once, whereas a person such as the serial divorcee who was speaking to me counts three times, as do each of his wives, who may also have generated additional divorces to add to the statistic.

Digging a bit deeper, statistics also indicate that only 15% of people have ever been divorced.   Even if you trim away about 25% of the remainder as those who never have married, primarily children who are too young for marriage and the odd lifelong bachelor and spinster, there are still likely 60% of the population who married once and never divorced.  So in the end, is that 25% of the population has never been married, 15% have been divorced one or more times, and 60% have been married only once (whether still married to their spouse or widowed).

That paints a much brighter picture about the institution of marriage than the media would care to promulgate: people who remain loyal to a partner all their lives outnumber people who are disloyal by a ratio of about 4 to 1.

Analogy for Brand Loyalty

Loyal to to a brand is not perfectly analogous to loyalty to a spouse, in that it is generally accepted that a company sells products to many people – such that the customer cannot expect to be the “one and only” customer of a brand.    Though it does seem a bit ironic, in the nature of a philanderer who expects loyalty of their spouse, for a brand to expect to become the “one and only” to each of their millions of customers.

It’s generally accepted that brands and customers have an open relationship, the terms of which are that a brand is free to pursue other relationships at will and loyalty is expected of a customer so long as their individual needs are being fulfilled.  That is to say, so long as a brand serves the needs for which it was purchased, the customer doesn’t mind if the brand wants to be appealing to other customers as well.

But therein lies the problem.  If a brand, in pursuit of new customers, changes something about itself that sufficiently detracts from its appeal to exiting customers, their loyalty will be lost.   This is most evident when a brand changes something to do with the functional benefit of a product.  It is also evident when a brand changes its service experience.  And in some instances, it occurs when a brand changes its culture or image (when a person feels the use of the brand is a reflection of their culture or status).  That is to say that people in general are willing to give loyalty, but it is not unconditional.

I have not seen statistics for brand loyalty that parallel the marriage statistics I presented earlier, but it does seem entirely reasonable that they might be about the same for many products: 25% of the population has never tried the product at all, 60% are generally loyal to a single brand, and 15% of the population has no brand loyalty and jumps from one brand to another at a whim.

I don’t expect these numbers to be that far off.  Browsing through my pantry and my wardrobe, and generally looking about at the things that I presently own, I do have the sense that a majority are brands that I have been purchasing all my life, and “about a quarter” seems about right for the brands that I have intentionally changed in the past several years.   I don’t expect that this is unusual.

Pessimism about Customer Loyalty

I also have the sense that companies are overly pessimistic about customer loyalty, in the same way that serial divorcees are pessimistic about loyalty of their future spouses.  A man who cannot keep a wife wishes to believe that his behavior is normal and that there’s something wrong with the women he's encountered – and in the same way a brand that cannot keep its customers wants to believe that its behavior is acceptable and that there’s something wrong with the customers, who will not give loyalty to the brand.   But this is mere posturing and, worse, it leads to an abdication of responsibility for making the relationship last.

That is to say that a 27-year-old who has divorced multiple times is likely a terrible husband.  While he feels that his ex-wives have failed him, he is the common element in each of those failed marriages.   And I strongly suspect that a similar conclusion can be drawn from any brand, or any professional in charge of a brand, that if they feel that their customers are disloyal, they are neglecting (or perhaps refusing) to consider the part they have played in the failure of that relationship.

In all, I am left with the sense the pessimism about long-term customer loyalty is not an accurate reflection of reality, and aggrandizes the customers who churn in an out because their behavior is more dramatic than that of the contented (or patient) customers who remain.   It’s far easier to get hired as a consultant, or to get budget allocated to a department, if there is an implicit promise to win new customers than it is to get hired or funded to maintain the loyalty of existing ones, and an inordinate proportion of time and money is spent chasing customers who have a history of serial disloyalty in hopes they will finally settle down with a good brand.

All of this ignores a less distressing reality: that most customers are loyal to most brands, provided that the brand remains loyal to keeping the promises it has made, implicitly or explicitly.   So it should be somberly considered whether it is really worthwhile, in the end, to neglect a loyal customer based in pursuit of new business that may not be faithful, or even have the desire to be faithful, to the brand.