| Kasz216 said: If Consumers have the time to research things, brand loyalty's effect is GREATLY reduced because people know what products actually fit their needs instead of what they perceive best fit their needs. I've already dicussed this to a great extent in my last reply but you still don't seem to have taken the point. There is almost a "processing stage" a consumer goes through in order to become brand loyal. Brand recognition > Brand Preference > Brand Loyalty Basically a consumer is brand loyal directly BECAUSE the brand suits their needs/tastes so well. Uninformed consumers making uninformed decisions does not make them brand loyal. They are simply purchasing a product without prior information. They are not purchasing it over another product becuase of their loyalty to the brand. People become brand loyal through their own personal research, experience and emotional exposure with the brand. Their overall satisfaction with the company, customer care, the price, the features etc. Strong brand loyalty... like the kind the article is talking about IS more or less a blind loyalty. Brand Loyalty is when you buy only said product, and it is MOST prevelant among those that have less time to do research. Or you do research but mostly biased research, for example if you do all your research and playstation sites. This is also the brand loyalty you were talking about. People who only buy one brand of product. Again, why? you still haven't offered any concrete evidence for this. You seem to be mistaking the strength of brand loyalty. Not all past consumers are going to be brand loyal. The N64 probably still sold to thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of hard core Nintendo loyals. That doesn't mean it was enough to stop the PS1's success as a tide of switchers, shifting loyals, and new consumers moved to the new PS system. Or your own article, for that matter. Which doesn't say brand loyalty is important. It just says having a brand is imortant. Which once again is a non factor since these are all household companies. There isn't a "Savelot brand" console. Having a strong brand is very important. As is brand loyalty. Especially amongst the home consoles. Companies make their most profits off the hard core loyals of their brand, and their brand advertising is usually directed at this crowd. People are likely going to trust something they've heard of before vs something they haven't or that just came from the supermarket and they don't know anything about. Lesser brand loyalty. Or Brand equity as it were is just a minor part of the equation. In some cases it can be negative if the product your selling is different from the other products you sell. Which is somewhat the case when it comes to the PS3 vs the rest of the playstation brand. One of the chief boons for the PS3 is having a hard core loyal crowd. Also I would say that the PSP and PS3 are in the same boat, both being cutting edge in terms of technology, both are perhaps quite similar to the rest of Sony (the message and image of the brand), if not the past PS brand. "You learn that creating customer loyalty is neither strategic nor tactic; rather, it is the ultimate objective and meaning of brand equity. Brand loyalty is brand equity.” Daryl Travis |
Basically there are hard core loyals for almost every major brand (these are considered the most important consumers for that brand).
It would appear that "lack of research" has very little to do with the reasons people become brand loyals. It has more to do with personal tastes, desires and habits that build into an overall preference for the said brand.
With the new and easy access to information (internet etc) people can now make more informed decisions regarding almost all products. However these people, who perhaps bought products without much knowledge in the past, were never brand loyals to begin with.
Also to return to the original point, that "brand loyalty is most prevalent amongst the poor."
"Findings indicate that, like brand loyalty, service loyalty has some demographic correlates, but they are few and weak"
Also China and India, two up-and-coming, but still undeniably poor countries for the most part, have very little brand loyalty, even for homemade products.
It's hard to find any other information of the demographic breakdown of brand loyalty. I'm actually now convinced that for the most part brand loyalty favours no section of society over the other. At least not to any degree that it counts.
