Brands have never invested so much in retaining their customers. And yet, they have never been so interchangeable.
Loyalty is mainly due to ease. We stay with our operator, our bank, our everyday brand. But in most cases, our habits are not a sign of deep attachment. They reflect a chain of facilities: an open account, registered contact details, a monthly invoice. There’s no real incentive to change, as long as the experience remains pretty much OK.
This is what has long allowed historical players to maintain their leadership. Among telephone operators, for example, this inertia protects brands that have been established for years. Until the moment when alternative offers make the change simple, readable, obvious. What we take for fidelity then turns out to be passivity.
Building loyalty cannot be programmed
Brands are therefore trying to counter this relational fragility with ever more elaborate loyalty programs. Points, statuses, cumulative benefits. These devices are useful for encouraging repetition, but they do not change the nature of the relationship. Because we cannot build an attachment which, in fact, never really existed.
Belonging, this feeling that a brand resembles us, that it fights for what matters to us, cannot be bought with promotional mechanics, and cannot be grafted onto a soulless offer. It requires commitment, consistency and a form of courage from brands.
The brand promise commits
In an increasingly transactional world, the brand is the main bulwark against commoditization. It makes it possible to formulate a singular promise: sufficiently differentiating to emerge, sufficiently clear to guide a choice, sufficiently strong to withstand the constant comparison of prices and offers.
But a promise is only valuable if it is kept. By the ability of a brand to embody it over time and in each product, each interaction, each experience. To transform a simple preference into true belonging.
Decathlon is a striking example. The brand does not build customer loyalty with its relational and promotional mechanisms. She convinces them, year after year, that making sport accessible to all is not a slogan, but a concrete commitment. From the 2 seconds tent, which has enabled generations of vacationers to become campers, to the Pacer application which supports runners in their progress, each innovation reinforces the brand’s fight.
True loyalty is not based on what a brand does to retain its customers, but on what it represents to them. Investing in loyalty without investing in the brand is building an artificial attachment. Ultimately, the issue is not how to retain your customers. It’s about embodying a promise that makes them want to choose us for the long term.
