Brand Affinity Dynamics

Towards a better understanding of Brand Affinity Relationship Drivers and their Dynamics

June 2007

The marketing community speaks of loyalty as an idealized state along a linear continuum – a process during which – if we are skillful, can transform customers into ‘life long’ partners fully engaged with our organizations. However that idealized notion of “loyalty” is false on two fronts.

Firstly the ‘loyalty’ continuum isn’t linear and secondly, except in rare instances, loyalty does not exist between customers and brands/services – lifelong or otherwise.

PEOPLE are LOYAL to their family, close personal friends, their country…you get the picture. CUSTOMERS have AFFINITIES to brands and services.

Notwithstanding the semantics, affinity is a more accurate term as it better reflects the nuances, the ebbs and flows of a commercial relationship where the brand delivers something the customer/user wants or needs, the brand and customer share an emotional bond while continuity of purchase unfolds.

 

Click here for link to the article:

 

Other articles of Interest:

Anatomy of a Brand Purchase

Brand Momentum

Share of Life 

Brand Momentum

Is it possible for a brand to have momentum*? The same notion of momentum we are all familiar with in the physical world much as a wave that gathers mass, velocity and direction allowing it to travel vast differences before dissipating or crashing on shore?

If a brand can have momentum, what will add to it?

Detract from it?

How do we measure it?

How do we manage it?

Click here for link to the article.

The Anatomy of a Brand Purchase

Summary: This two-part article seeks to help better understand how to stimulate brand relationships and brand purchases – of balancing the short and the long-term.  Of knowing the right way of interacting with the right person, in the right ways about the right thing(s), at the right time/place.

The central thesis is that a brand will achieve greater market success when it comes to recognize and respond to one of 4 basic types of (economic/Wallet, rational/Mind, emotional/Heart, mature/Life) relationships that its customers can have with the brand. These relationship characteristics define what elements of the brand value chain they will be more receptive to and the kind of ‘psychological’ language that marketers should be using when communicating with those brand customers.

Once defined, using the same (W, M, H, L) relationship characteristics allows marketers to transform a media neutral planning model into a marketing integration impact (MII) tool that will identify the combinations of Communication, Experience and Overture events that have yielded a successful purchase, and with it evolve to more balanced tactical and strategic initiatives that can be attributed back to an ROI.

Purchase (P) = xC + yE + zO = 1

The following outlines some thoughts and approaches first put forward in “The Ultimate Decision” and “ Share of Life” posts and extends it through to a model structure that seeks to develop a healthier balance in nurturing purchase tipping events.

Article: The Anatomy of a Brand Purchase - Part 1