I came across a post from Kyle Flaherty that talked about the differences between Coke and Pepsi and their respective marketing approaches. It's a really interesting post, so I encourage you to go give it a read. While reading the post, and in the comment I left, I brought up the question of brand loyalty in today's social world. And more importantly, does brand loyalty even exist?
The logical answer to this question is that brand loyalty matters more than ever. Now more than ever, consumers are in control of the relationship process. We choose which brands we interact with, where we interact with them and how we interact with said brands. That being sad, I'm not quite sure this is the most accurate answer to this question.
As immediate as our interactions are, a large part of interactions are based around value. How I define value is different than how you define value. While a lot of brands struggle to provide this value, technology has definitely made it easier for consumers to seek this value from the brands they decide are worth their time, and hopefully in the end, their money. With the speed in which interaction and news is gathered and shared, consumers are demanding more value, more quickly, for a longer period of time. As a result, one can argue that the concept of brand loyalty and how quickly that loyalty is gained and/or lost has changed dramatically. For this reason, I'm not quite sure brand loyalty exists.
Ironically, I think it's completely fair to say that the argument I just made against brand loyalty could be flipped and used to argue that social has made brandy loyalty even more important and easier. And to be honest, I'm not sure which side of the argument I'm on. I'm really undecided about this discussion.
What do you think? What impact has social played on brand loyalty? Does brand loyalty even exist anymore?