Customer Loyalty: Turning the Tide

Tide works.  It cleans my clothes, it smells nice, it’s reasonably priced and – because nothing else has caught my eye more than Tide’s famous red-orange container – I almost always purchase it from the limited selection of detergents available at my downtown Chicago grocery store. 

Last month, things changed.  I visited a suburban Super Wal-Mart to stock up on less expensive goods to bring back to the city.  Turning my grocery cart down the mile-long detergent aisle suddenly broadened my horizon.  Like a little kid in a candy store, I ventured down the aisle smelling and reading about more detergents than I ever knew existed.  Happily walking away with discounted “Sunshine Energy” ALL detergent in hand got me thinking about my previous relationship with Tide.  Have I been Tide-loyal this whole time, or merely Tide-satisfied?  Is my recent ALL purchase the beginning of a loyalty shift – am I “Turning the Tide”? 

Customer satisfaction is a rational and attitudinal connection to a brand.  If repeated over time, satisfaction can – but does not necessarily – lead to positive behaviors toward the brand, which can be called loyalty.  There are varying intensity levels of loyalty.  On the lighter end of the loyalty spectrum is repeat purchase behavior.  On the heavier and more passionate end of the spectrum, customers exhibit multiple behaviors that are positive to the brand:  repeat purchases, frequent recommendations and brand extension / related product purchases. 

So, if satisfaction isn’t the key driver behavior, what is?  CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Kevin Roberts states:

“Emotion and reason are intertwined, but when they’re in conflict, emotion wins every time”.

Emotional attitudes lead to changes in purchase behavior and active recommendations of the brand to others, which directly boost financials. 

Yet, research studies focus on satisfaction – its measurements, its relativity to competing brands and customers’ product and service ideals.  Brand managers focus on packaging changes, brand extensions and product alterations to incrementally improve customers’ product satisfaction.  But, they’re missing the point!  Satisfaction is a necessary but highly insufficient motivator of loyalty.  Instead of focusing on product alterations to improve satisfaction, brand managers should focus their time and dollars on hooking their customers beyond satisfaction.  This requires digging deeper into the emotional side of the consumer psyche with more powerful research methods.  Despite its difficulty, this process is crucial to determining what binds consumers to brands.

So, was I loyal to Tide? 

The answer is not so clear.  Repeat purchasing is a type of loyalty on the light end of the loyalty spectrum.  However, I believe that I’ve been merely satisfied with Tide detergent.  I purchased it repeatedly due to a limited product selection, a reasonable price point, attraction to its red-orange packaging and the familiarity of my grocery shopping routine - all of which are rational attitudinal connections.  I don’t have emotional connections to Tide detergent.  I don’t have ties to it from childhood or feelings about the scent it leaves on my clothes and I don’t recommend it to friends and family.  These reasons leave me a mildly loyal repeat purchaser by happenstance.  Had Tide engaged me more emotionally to its brand, I would have exhibited more passionate loyalty behaviors.  Until then, I’ve turned the tide.

 

Contributed by Kelsey Valentine, Associate, Synovate Customer Experience