Who am I, if I am not the things I buy? I think this is a question we started to address in class on Tuesday. Blackberry or iPhone, Windows or Mac, Playstation or Xbox. And we saw some very deep brand loyalty (particularly around Apple).
After class I was recounting the discussion from class to my partner, and we started talking about the effectiveness of marketing, and how it seems to have changed brand loyalty. We were both born in the early 1980s, and we are basically the tail end of the so-called “Gen X’ers”, or the generation too savvy for advertising. Advertising when we were growing up was a lot more straight forward (as we discussed in class) – here is a product, here are the features, now buy! This type of advertising worked with our parents, but as we (the children) became more saturated with a constant bombardment of advertising, we became the sceptics.
I think this is when brand loyalty of lower cost products began to decline. Not many people under the age of 50 are really brand loyal to things like bathroom tissue, fabric wash, or even body soap. Most go to the grocery store or pharmacy and buy what is on sale and available.
With that said, I think consumers have become more brand loyal to those things that are trendy, and the almost cult like loyalty begins to become part of their personal definition. As discussed in class, if you are a Mac person, you are REALLY a Mac person. The kind of loyalty that is shown to companies like Apple and RIM often mean if you own an iPhone or Blackberry, you’re unlikely to switch to something else, even if something else comes out that might meet your needs better. It becomes part of how you define yourself to other people.
And if your advertisement doesn’t represent who I think I am, you’ve lost me from the outset. I want to be entertained – and if you entertain me, I might buy.
Cheers,
Leah
5 comments:
Great post, Leah! I'm glad you touched upon the subject of brand loyalty. It's obvious that there's some kind of symbiotic relationship between a person's identity and what they wear, own, and buy. I completely agree with you when you say that "consumers have become more brand loyal to those things that are trendy, and the almost cult like loyalty begins to become part of their personal definition".
With that said, I think your post raises several important issues on how brand loyalty and personal identity can defy one another. Since consumers are more prone to become brand loyal to the things that are trendy, what happens when these trends start to garner unfavourable reviews? Will the consumer stay loyal to the brand, or abandon it just like any other trend? Furthermore, if the consumer chooses to revoke their loyalty from a brand, will they still have a personal identity?
Take Crocs footwear, for example. I don't even know if you can consider calling them a fashion trend in the first place, but I personally don't like Crocs so I'll try to restrain myself from being biased. But anyway, I remember seeing almost everyone donning Crocs a few years ago. It was the trend back then and some of my friends managed to get sucked into buying them. They even bought the same style in different highlighter colours (ugh). It was brand loyalty at its finest. But as the months went buy, I noticed less people were wearing them; my friends stopped wearing Crocs altogether. More and more hate reviews were given about Crocs and even a website dedicated to eliminating Crocs was created.
So going back to what I was saying earlier, do the consumers who were then loyal to Crocs but ended up abandoning the brand still have a personal identity? I think this is when the relationship between brand loyalty and personal identity become ambiguous. Possibly, people just moved on and substituted their brand loyalty to Crocs for something else...hopefully something more substantial.
All I know is, my friends never want to speak of it again. But of course, the occasional "Omg, do you remember when you used to wear Crocs??" comes up every now and then.
Krizia – thank you so much for responding!
I think you bring up an interesting point – what happens when you switch loyalties. I remember the Crocs phase, and I also had a few pairs, and now look back and think to myself – “why?” (and I did switch to more substantial footwear – haha)
When the switch is that simple, you really do have to wonder how deep the product loyalty really goes, and what ultimately it is “practical” to be really loyal to. I find it really interesting because I read a study years ago when I was studying marketing, and the study spoke about loyalty to Tide detergent – people who loved it said they would never switch, and it didn’t matter if something was significantly cheaper at the grocery store or that the other product was more powerful or better, they were always going to get Tide and had been loyal for, in some cases, decades. This kind of loyalty could not likely exist for a fashion trend, or electronics, or any number of other products that exist now. “Stuff” seems to come and go now with trends, buy-outs, and planned obsolescence. The products we see today won’t likely be anywhere five years from now.
What strikes me is we are not even “brand” loyal to the parent companies like with Tide anymore – I don’t think the loyalty goes as deep into our personal identity as we think – and I’m not really sure that it’s a bad thing. It certainly makes the job of the advertisers more difficult, but I think that there exists a general scepticism in society that means products do really need to be better for us to choose them – it is not blind loyalty.
And I say that realizing that everything that was said about Apple refutes this point – but I will be interested to see if that kind of loyalty really does stick into the future, or if as other new products come out, people start switching to the next new thing.
Maybe trend has more power than brand now.
Hi Leah and Krizia,
Great thoughts on brand loyalty and how demographics generally tend to be loyal to trending brands as oppose to say, bathroom tissue. I wanted to respond with some ideas about brand loyalty and what happens when someone switches over as mentioned by Krizia, or in some cases when a brand becomes problematic or even dangerous to the target demographic.
Take Fisher Price for example. The company is synonymous with children’s toys and are generally perceived as being the safest toy manufacturing company for children. Now, let’s think back to October 2010 when over 11 MILLION articles were recalled due to child safety issues, including high chairs, inflatable balls and tricycles, that dated as far back as 1997. However, this wasn’t the first time Fisher Price had announced a major recall. In early 2007 Mattel recalled 21 million units of Chinese-made toys. In August 1997 Fisher Price recalled a million toys containing excessive levels of lead in surface paints used to paint toys that cause serious health risks to young kids. This was followed up later that year in October when 1.5 million infant toys were recalled all because of safety issues with the toys.
As you can see, there are just three examples of over 33 million toys being recalled by Fisher Price from 1997-2010 (note: not ALL the recalls during these years were mentioned, therefore the number of recalled items is much higher). Wasn’t Fisher Price known to be the best manufacturers for children’s products? What gives? When looking at current recalls within the company, know that Fisher Price made about $2.22 billion in 2010 which is a two percent increase from 2009. Fisher Price has had some serious problems with how these toys are manufactured and clearly people are skipping some steps, using cheap sources, and avoiding safety testing. How can people still be buying from a company that can pose serious dangers to their kids? No significant decrease in sales means that people are not changing their buying powers and going for an alternative company. Maybe in the case of Fisher Price, it’s an issue of there only being one major company that caters to toys for tots, and there isn’t many alternative options so it’s harder for parents to go a different route.
Fisher Price’s brand slogan is “The Brand You Know and Trust”, their Values as stated on the company website are: “keeping with our long-standing tradition of innovation, quality, durability, safety and good value, we offer products and services consumers can trust to improve their family’s lives”. It seems as though people keep forgetting that this brand has been putting kids in danger since 1993 with their numerous product recalls and supposed “safety measures” that are “enforced”. Are there any brands out that are “safe” for people? Unfortunately because Fisher Price is a dominant company in the children’s toy industry, I don’t think there will ever be an alternative to this brand and I don’t think a single person not buying into their poorly made toys will ever make a large enough impact on the company to dramatically change their ways.
Hi!
I've posted a comment on my blog: http://terrencethoughts.blogspot.com/2011/04/response-leahs-do-i-define-labels-or-do.html
Tt.
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