TRI DUC ENGLISH - Brand Loyalty TRI DUC ENGLISH Reading Practice: Brand Loyalty From the neighborhood barber to the international conglomerate, most businesses have a common goal: repeat customers. Developing a committed clientele can be more valuable than attracting new customers, whose loyalty to a company's products may be fleeting. Brand loyalty is a psychological bond that, once established, is difficult to reverse—and it is more complicated than simply buying the same product time and again. True brand loyalty differs from what some marketing researchers refer to as spurious loyalty—a passive type of buying motivated by habit, convenience, price, and availability but not the result of any true loyalty or passion for the actual merchandise. Convincing consumers with spurious loyalty to try another brand can be quite easy. Products that create true consumer loyalty tend to be nonessential day-to-day items such as tobacco, beverages, candy, and beauty products, as well as luxury purchases such as designer clothes and cars. Household staples such as milk, eggs, sugar, and paper products create little brand loyalty, with most consumers just as likely to purchase private labels or store brands or whatever is on sale. A product must have acceptable quality to establish true brand loyalty, but even top quality is not enough on its own to forge a strong connection with a consumer. Customers relate to products for emotional and symbolic reasons. People identify with the image associated with a brand, for example, as a result of a celebrity endorsement or because of the social values of the company. In addition, people consistently purchase pricey items because of the perceived status those items confer. Brand-loyal consumers are unlikely to defect to the competition because loyal consumers develop a preference for a product, ignore negative associations, and believe it outperforms others, even when there is little difference among brands. For example, beverage drinkers in blind taste tests regularly fail to select their favored brand—even though they mention taste as the primary reason for their loyalty. Brand loyalty is a worldwide phenomenon, bu...