Brand recognition and loyalty would not exist if it weren’t for marketing. Marketing puts a brand in front of consumers and businesses, recognition is built and the better the advertising, the greater the loyalty to the brand. Custom Gear offers the following information on the link between brand recognition and loyalty.
Brand Awareness
Markets are bigger, and consumers wiser. Today’s consumers demand more information on products before they purchase. With the Internet so easily accessible there aren’t too many consumers that purchase without knowing something about the brand.
Luckily for advertisers, today’s technology offers many ways to reach consumers for brand awareness to be built. Social media is a big play in consumer/advertiser interaction and brand awareness. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter provide advertisers a way to get to know their target audiences, interact, and introduce them to their brand. There are also many review sites like Yelp that allow consumers ready to purchase to read reviews on the advertiser. Advertisers will find that testimonials are a big influence in consumer buying practices. Blogging is another way to become a master in your niche, as well as videos posted on sites like YouTube.
As for the good old fashioned techniques, there’s nearly anything that competes with promotional products. Promotional gifts and gadgets can be inexpensive and still have a big impact on building brand awareness. In fact, consumers claim that they are more prone in doing business with the advertiser once they receive a promotional gift.
Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty results in different forms. Consumers can build brand loyalty through the tried and true method. Brand loyalty can also be built in an advertiser’s marketing efforts. As mentioned earlier on, promotional products are among the best and most effective way to build brand awareness. Consumers welcome promotional products and studies show that over half of consumers that receive a promotional product do business with the advertiser.
Brand loyalty is not just in the purchase of a product. It is also in the retention of the customer. Advertisers must create and keep communication with customers, interact with them, follow up, and be their number 1 company for the product or service.
With brand awareness, loyalty is built. There is a link and it results from the advertiser’s marketing efforts and the quality of the brand.
The attributes of the same product are more significant in the subsequent purchasing decisions, especially when the products from which the consumer can choose differ significantly from each other in relation to criteria to which the he/she attaches great importance. This is why it is vital to understand which product properties matter to the consumer. This requires additional research.
Good brand recall has a number of desirable effects:
- The recall of one brand blocks off the other brands from the range of alternatives in which the consumer makes his/her selection,
- Within a set of familiar brands consumers pick the ones better known to them, especially if they cannot see any special differences between the competing offerings,
- Good brand recall forms the basis for a clear and attractive brand image,
- Brand recall coupled with high customer satisfaction levels translates into customer loyalty.
How to measure brand awareness?
In order to measure brand awareness we ask the respondent to name all the brands which he/she associates with a given product category. Then we ask him/her to pick from a list the brands he/she recognises. As a result we obtain three brand recall indicators:
- Spontaneous brand recall – the brands named by the consumer himself/herself. These are the ones from among which the consumer chooses when buying the product of a given category. Spontaneous brand recall thus defines the consumer’s selection range.
- Top-of-mind recall (“the most remembered and recalled brand”) – the brand first named by the consumer himself/herself. This brand is attributed the highest value – when choosing which product to buy the consumer will probably pick a product of this brand. The strength of the consumer’s emotional link with the brand is better reflected by the brand named first than by spontaneous recall.
- Aided recall – recognition of a given brand among others. The spontaneous recall means that the consumer remembers the brand, whereas the aided recall shows that the consumer is only able to recognise it (“has heard about it/has seen it”). Aided recall indicates a weak link to the brand on the part of the consumer.
Brand awareness is a measure of the effectiveness of a company’s marketing activity. However, one has to be aware of the limitations of such a measure, because consumers also perceive a brand through the prism of factors beyond the company’s direct control, e.g. recommendations by other consumers.
Brand awareness is a starting point for customer satisfaction and loyalty studies
Customer satisfaction is measured as satisfaction both with various attributes of the same product and with the customer’s experience with the company.
High brand recognition translates into customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is stronger if the customers’ positive associations with the brand and the knowledge they had about a product before their first contact with it have been confirmed and strengthened with the first purchase.
High brand satisfaction and its presence in the consumer’s range of spontaneous recall translate into his/her loyalty – he/she is more willing to buy other products of the same brand.