What do we do about it?
Some industry stakeholders recommend integrating brand-building media tactics with ecommerce experiences as a way to battle loyalty defections in the online purchase process. Suggestions include running paid search, display and video ads on retailer sites and apps, as well as placing other paid promotions in retailers’ targeted emails and social posts.
However, tactics like these may not be enough to hold off the deeper, long-standing forces eroding brand loyalty.
As far back as 2016, research from Catalina and McKinsey suggested that consumer loyalty had already been significantly eroded, and that underlying cultural and attitudinal shifts, driven largely by progressive technology, had gradually increased the value of the “new” or “different” vs. the “known.”
Now, just as COVID has accelerated a long-term trend like digital adoption, it has also accelerated our consumption of change and solidified its prominence in our habits and desires.
Embracing change
As consumers endure more and more change each day, brands and their agencies need a way to read emerging signals in the vast ocean of data generated every moment by our current technologies—and respond opportunistically in real time to maximize their desired outcomes.
In order to respond effectively to viral trends, breaking news, industry moves, influencers and thought leaders, brands should tap into a framework that enables them to move with speed even in short windows of opportunity.
For more details about our Brand Mentality™ framework, and how one CPG client quickly drove a seven-fold increase in purchase intent behaviors when some controversial news polarized a competitor’s customers, request a private seminar for you and your team.
— Robert Helstrom, Vice President, Marketing, Sightly