Brand Loyalty: Who Wins and Who Loses

According to the new survey done by Grocery Manufactures of America 49% of respondents indicated that a familiar brand name was the first or the second most important element when making a purchase in the supermarket. And 67% of respondents said that they would “chase the brand” to a different store if it was not available.

Brand loyalty is a consumers’ conscious or unconscious decision that is expressed through the intention or behavior to keep repurchase a brand continually.

Consumers initially make a trial purchase. If the brand satisfies consumers’ level of quality, features and image at the right price then their behavior becomes habitual.

To create a brand loyalty to a certain product, brand has to mean more then a name to consumers; it has to mean a certain level of satisfaction. People keep on buying the product because they are already familiar with the product. Nostalgia plays a very important role as well. A lot of consumers buy certain brands because their families had used it for a long time, and because that is what they grew up with.

Consumers, however, are not the only ones who gain from the brand loyalty. Brand Loyalty is the force that makes customers keep buying product repeatedly and the force that reduces the number of customer losses. The more customers are loyal to the brand the more goods are sold on the market and the higher the revenue the firm gets.

Brand loyalty makes consumers become less sensitive to changes in price and more willing to search for their favorite brand and to become less sensitive to the promotions of the competitive firms.
In order to increase brand loyalty a company has to break already existing habits through advertising and to reinforce the customers to buy new product, and keep on reminding about its outstanding characteristics. To make customers buy that product again, a firm has to make sure that consumers can get everything they want from a product and to stand behind the product.

All these steps done by producers not only increase the brand loyalty of their products but also stimulate the competition on the market, and create the mechanism, that makes the firms that produce goods which do not meet the expected quality, and that provide not enough support for their customers. However, it may be hard for the firms that are introducing new products on the market to brake old habits and to increase brand loyalty to the new products. But once the brand loyalty is created and a lot of actions are done to keep the customers' support and quality on the appropriate level, brand loyalty becomes a very important tool in the company's policy.