Loyalty Paradigm Shift

What incites loyalty in human beings is an age-old inquiry, one that is often contemplated by business enterprises to build loyalty for their own brands. It would also be useful to understand what triggers loyalty and how does the utility of a product can compel consumers to forge an association so strong that it can be regarded as ‘brand loyalty’.

Loyalty as best described by Confucius, demands reciprocity between any two parties, the case herein is the relationship between the prince and his ministers: "A prince should employ his minister according to the rules of propriety; ministers should serve their prince with faithfulness (loyalty)." – (Analects 3:19).

Loyalty is not merely a strong emotional attachment, serving as an unconditional predisposition. Neither is loyalty to be confused as cultic in nature, where peer pressure will get you to buy into an idea for the fear of being singled out. Harley Davidson, a brand much admired throughout the world for its workmanship had some people label it as a ‘cult brand’. Perhaps reviewing the history of the brand will establish the fact that even a brand like Harley Davidson, when it couldn’t deliver on the quality standard, was beaten down and mocked by American consumers as “Hardly Ableson”. During the quality crisis of the 70’s, the brand's image plummeted so much so that “H.O.G”, once proudly identified as the Harley Owners Group became a pejorative term. There is no place for cultism in brand building, “consumer is not a moron she is your wife” – David Ogilvy; when the quality of Harley Davidson went down, so did its brand loyalty. Finally, when the new management in the 80’s turned around the operations and restored the trust in product quality; the brand re-emerged stronger than ever, and gained batch after batch of new customers that again wore H.O.G badge with honour.

The principle of mutual gain is inherently built into the structure of any sustainable business relationship. However, for a relationship to elevate to the status of loyalty, it must incorporate the principle of reciprocity; which is not an occasional give-and-take rather a function of symbiotic mutualism, where both parties commit to?bringing?a substantial benefit to each other.

The natural world demonstrates this arrangement beautifully, where a clownfish develops immunity to the poisonous tentacles of sea anemone and takes shelter amidst its tentacles, in return clownfish eats dead tentacles and lures in fish that sea anemone can prey upon. This symbiotic bond can also thrive between a brand and customers, when a brand is loyal to its customers’ interests, the customers reciprocate with brand loyalty. The idea of brand loyalty cannot sustainably exist without customer loyalty. The relationship between the two rests on a symbiotic balance of reciprocity, where customer loyalty is the action force i.e. the original effort and brand loyalty is a reaction force reciprocating the original effort. A brand initiates the relationship by investing in its customer’s best interests from R&D in new age materials to enhancing lifestyle technologies, techniques, methodologies, ergonomics and environmental impact. Such a focus on identifying customers' interests, transcends a business organization into building a culture of ‘Customer Loyalty’. The customers reciprocate this continual effort with consideration and brand affinity that gradually forge into a ‘Brand?Loyalty’.?

Brand Loyalty is a Symbiotic Balance of Reciprocity

Customer Loyalty is a business mindset, which goes beyond customer care or customer relationship management, it’s an organisational culture that explores all potential areas of investment that can make the quality of life better for the consumers. It’s an attitudinal shift in business environments that is responsible for delivering customer interests. The idea of ‘Customer Interests’ shouldn’t be confused with ‘Consumer Protection’ regulated by the government agencies or ‘Consumer Interests Group’ that are focused on the issues and welfare of consumers, keeping a check on businesses. Customer Interests?includes?all potential unmet needs that when identified can deliver a great quality of life to the consumers.

The purpose of identifying customer interests is a part of business improvement model that assesses the areas that a business should invest in as a part of customer loyalty strategy to attain a competitive advantage.

The purpose of identifying customer interests is a part of business improvement model that assesses the areas that a business should invest in as a part of customer loyalty strategy to attain a competitive advantage. The idea of customer loyalty is to build a business that is sustainable, environment-friendly, ethical, technologically advance and innovative in ways that its utility neither harms nor exploits the consumers, rather it liberates them to experience a better brand offering. Brands that truly add value to the customer interests will maintain relevance and loyal customers will always return, even if they occasionally try out new offers in the market. However, in a market environment where current choices do not deliver customers interests, the result is a consistent brand hopping. This urge to seek something better is what confuses some marketers as consumer’s indifference to brand loyalty.

Somewhere along the way, when the symbiotic relationship is dishonoured and the financial interests of business become somewhat tyrannical to customer interests, the competitive advantage takes a downward spiral and the playfield opens up for a disruptor to challenge the status quo. Much like when the research and innovation for cleaner engines?don't?get through to the boardrooms of automotive giants and consumers are pacified with primitive internal combustion technology, such stagnation opens up the playfield for a disruptive thinking. Taking advantage of the innovation gap, Tesla challenged to shift the paradigm of loyalty from fossil fuel acceleration to its proprietary ‘insane’ and ‘ludicrous’ modes; from primitive power generation to solar roof tiles; from the?monopoly of the?power grid to independent Power Wall energy storage system.

The question whether Tesla would be a?successful business in the future is perhaps not so relevant anymore as much to the fact that Tesla has people believe that a shift can happen, that they can take control of technology by not letting their loyalty settle for the lowest bidder to the customer’s interests. Owing to the controlled nature of information flow and patent-driven innovation, 20th?Century model of progress served businesses to accumulate wealth with infrequent investments to customer interests. In an open-source world of the 21st?century, everybody is invited to make the pie bigger for innovations that promise to serve customer interests in a?commercially viable way. Rebellion in innovation and customer interests has found its deserved position in the business model of the?21st?century where customer’s interests gradually inspire start-ups.

The next battlefield for brand marketing and communications will be fought on the plains of suggestion. In the digital landscape, the power of suggestion has no bounds as long as the user is connected to the internet wilderness. The problem is, it’s no longer a wilderness, rather well defined algorithmic pathways that direct to an information cocoon that user is most likely to be content with. It’s how search engines and social networks place advertisements to make money by?constricting?the user’s universe into manageable clusters. The information cocoon is a controlled environment of suggestion that lets in what makes more bottom-line sense to the service provider consequentially constricting the outlook of end user’s universe. In Google’s own defence, this “personalization” feature can be turned off anytime by the users after cumbersome steps and in-depth understanding of their browser setting. Then again, how many users are consciously made aware of this restricting paradigm and how many of them are capable of turning off the restrictive feature. Many users fall prey to the complexity of design that is not in customer’s interest.

Owing to natural cognitive abilities, users on the Internet are becoming more unreceptive to controlled suggestions; our natural intelligence filter is cancelling out information that is trying to lure us in, thanks to the?evolutionary instinct of not falling prey to frequent perils.

Owing to natural cognitive abilities, users on the Internet are becoming more unreceptive to controlled suggestions; our natural intelligence filter is cancelling out information that is trying to lure us in, thanks to the?evolutionary instinct of not falling prey to frequent perils. Though people will continue to search for information to help them decide their next smartphone buy or cat food to switch to; brand owners should be vigilant of the crossfire in the?battle of wits between the algorithmic search results and human intelligence. Whenever a search algorithm tries to filter content and limit our perspective, human intelligence figures out ways to block out unnecessary and irrelevant suggestions and seek out what may serve its interest. It's what evolution has engineered us to do to survive. Perhaps a disruptive search engine algorithm is what's needed to mimic human intelligence in evaluating and retrieving meaningful information that would be of value to the inquirer. Like humans, a disruptive search engine technology must understand the utility of curiosity – a human trait, an antithesis to information cocoon. An intelligent search engine would disrupt the status quo and expand human reach to global information pool and still be able to make financial sense for the owners and advertisers. Search giants are next in line for the shift in loyalty paradigm, the more the users feel their universe is being restricted; the faster will be the switch to the disruptive search engine technology.?

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