Is brand loyalty an outcome of brand engagement or are they two distinct goals that need to be pursued separately?
One argument may be that these are not different goals – that engagement led to loyalty, while the contradictory argument may be that they were indeed to be two completely different marketing goals that needed to be backed by separate strategies and tactics. Following are some pointers to support both these arguments. Feel free choose your take:
The Star Trek view
Brand engagement is the fundamental goal of a brand manager. Don’t brand managers try to ensure that consumers are seeing, feeling, experiencing, associating and indeed fantasizing about their brands? If a brand can evoke these feelings, then logically, will loyalty not follow? The Star Trek show is an apt example to this.
Star Trek appealed to many of us because at a very base level we were able to insert ourselves into the Star Trek narrative and wanted to boldly go where no man has gone before.
Engagement clearly led to loyalty – didn’t it?
While true, let’s hear out the flip side of this argument.
The Star Wars view
Using engagement as the sole mechanism to garner loyalty is to idealize the issue.
The argument misses at least one important factor – Competition. For instance, while growing up – Star Trek was the only staple science fiction show that we got to see on Indian television. Would we have been an equally big fan, if alternatives existed? I don’t think so. If there were alternatives, our loyalty to Star Trek would have to be enhanced with certain switching barriers – maybe in the form of Star Trek prize entry competitions.
Let us take a direct example to illustrate the point further. You’ve probably got an Airline Frequent Flyer account, which the airline uses to drive loyalty. With every incremental purchase, the airline is effectively increasing your switching barrier. But are you truly flying the airline because you are caught up in their engaging brand narrative? How many times have you flown recently on your preferred airline and come away feeling that it was one of the worst service experiences you’ve had? And yet you have gone back and flown that once more just because it was taking you closer to your free Hawaii trip?
Aren’t loyalty and engagement two entirely different goals then, pursued with entirely different tactics? If airlines were able to back-up their “hold the customer hostage with miles” programs with an engaging service experience, would that not make them some of the greatest brands in the world?
I’m doing a research to explore all three models now. I wonder which kind of brands have the most brand appeal – those that follow the pure engagement model (think Star-bucks), those that follow the mixed model – engaging brand backed up by a formalized loyalty program (think American Express) or those that rely primarily on a formalized loyalty program to retain consumers (think IndiGo)?
