Customer satisfaction may be the oldest brand metric in the book. When the first “consumer” traded a pelt for a flint (or something like that), he or she was either pleased and came back for more, or found that the flint shattered on first use, leading to a series of unflattering cave paintings of the vendor.
Even this silly example draws out several of the critical implications of customer satisfaction, including its roles in loyalty and brand switching, word of mouth and reputation, and long-term brand viability.
As brands and communications channels have multiplied, the complexity of satisfaction assessments and loyalty has grown exponentially. With greater choice in almost every category has come a sense that poor product performance need not be tolerated. However, if choice feels excessive—too many deodorants or energy drinks to pick from—harried consumers may simply buy what they know instead of wading into the pros and cons of a new decision. To manage brands effectively today, marketers need to have a holistic picture of all the connections between consumers and brands and the real factors driving not just current purchase decisions but also the long-term health of the brand/consumer bond (if one exists).
Misunderstanding Loyalty
First, we need to be clear that loyalty is not the same as what I like to call “affinity.” Viewed from the outside, brand loyalty may be just a series of transactions: A consumer buys the same product for a period of months, so he must be loyal. In fact, this kind of loyalty may be driven by such unglamorous factors as lack of choice or price pressures. It could just be a case of simple use and re-use, not active choosing.
Marketers who manage to this most basic level of loyalty are living quarter to quarter, trading strategic planning and decision making for reactivity. With a potentially tenuous hold on consumers’ pocketbooks, these brands could crater with a single shift in the competitive landscape.
Building Platforms for Customer Satisfaction
We have also learned from behavioral economics that brand experiences—the core drivers of satisfaction—are more multifaceted than marketers of the past believed. Companies often assumed that product quality was the only ingredient of good or bad brand experiences: The car turned on or it did not; the lightbulb lasted 1,000 hours or burned out in a week.
Written by David Krajicek,CEO of GfK Consumer Experiences North America
Source:AMA
