Brand represents vision and creates trust among the consumers. TATA – The magnificent homegrown brand is present in a variety of categories of products ranging from consumer products to IT systems, Consulting services and Energy sector. Their presence in multiple categories directly translates even an average consumer into trusting the brand to be credible, thereby strongly positioning their products in the minds of the customers.
TATA and many other successful brands have done this by maintaining exceptional Quality of Product, and creating common (patriotic) sentiment for buying their Brand’s product.
Ideally what does any marketing person want?
We all know the objectives of a marketing funnel to be: Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Intent, Evaluation, Purchase. The Unsaid 7th Objective in the marketing funnel is – Repeat Purchase.
How does customer loyalty depend upon the type of customers?
Types of customers
1. True Friends – They are the people that actually spread the word of mouth. These customers would completely rely on your Brand Image and Credibility as they are the absolute Fanboys of your product. In this case, brand credibility would bring you new customers. Here the Brand image will play a very important role in the sale of the products. One such example would be Apple, the brand has strongly created a hype among the customers by getting seen frequently year on year, constantly innovating their product, and timely launches of new products.
2. Butterflies and Barnacles – According to Steve Jobs, a customer does not know what they want. It is the job of the brand to redefine their need and retain the customer by ensuring credibility of the brand. Butterflies and Barnacles are the customers who are loyal who would have a good image and perception of the brand but not high frequency of purchase. Therefore a good brand image, these customers would not buy frequently as long as there are other credible competitors and diverse range of options.
3. Strangers – Stranger is a customer who is associated with you momentarily for the quality of your product and their need. As long as the market exists, there are going to be good quality products of other brands. You can make a stranger into a True Friend by improving the credibility of your brand. Creating an ethos of your Brand would definitely increase the credibility and bring this customer back to you.
• Within these there also primarily 3 types of customers
• New – Campaigns
• Existing – Loyalty
• Lapsers – Eg. buying is occasional. Most middle-class Indians buy gold from the local gold jewelry makers who may have earned their trust through generations. Customers will buy your product once every year. Apart from the financial standpoint, one can make these customers buy frequently, by sending representatives out to these customers. Also, there are few programmes where marketing can be done by making these people invest some amount to gain more credits the next time they intend to buy.
As we can see from the above 2*2 matrix, the behaviour of the consumers with respect to frequency of buying and Average ticket size per visit, it is evident that every customer would buy from any brand when there is credibility over any other brand which has failed to capture the trust of the customer. Even if these are Lapsers, they should come to the brands with High Credibility
Conclusion :
As the above study shows that there is a positive relation between Brand Credibility and Customer loyalty, any type of consumer can be retained by increasing the brand credibility. Brand Credibility can be introduced to customers by making it easy for them to associate with the product and the brand with relatable vision and mission that gives a sense of belonging.
• Quality of Product is a very important factor for driving the customers for buy your product.
• Creation of common Jewelry patriotic sentiment for buying an Indian Brand. The is something the TATAs and Mahindra & Mahindra’s of the world have been successful in building
This article’s findings suggest that brand image might increase customer commitment and favourably affect consumers' loyalty to a product or service. It determines the level of brand image relevance and its effect on businesses and their market offerings. A strong brand image should have a positive effect on consumer loyalty, which in turn should have a long-term impact on how well customers perceive the quality of an offering and how easily they can be satisfied. It should also have a greater impact on how willingly consumers will commit to that offering in order to generate a sustainable profit.