Copyright 2008 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.
This blog post was transferred from another service.
I responded to this post- "Thinking Through Customer Loyalty" by Ted Hurlbut
http://blog.inc.com/retail/2008/09/thinking_through_customer_loya.html
Ted wrote some good things. I suggest you read what he wrote also.
Too many business owners & sales reps expect "loyalty". Very often, it's ridiculous. Loyalty to a business would prompt consumers to buy from or give money to a business, even if they don't get any benefits. Would most business owners & sales reps be loyal like that to any other businesses?
What's implied is consumers owe a certain level of purchases. If consumers don't perform their buying "duty", they're labeled as fickle - disloyal.
I have a problem with the term, but not the whole concept. I've heard & read too often of fickle consumers. Fickleness is at the other end of the scale from "loyalty".
Consumers are loyal to themselves, as they should be. They're concerned about themselves, so when a business provides what they need to take care of themselves, consumers buy what they can afford. It's business owners & sales reps who are fickle - lazy - if they expect consumers to do the selling job.
They buy from businesses as long they feel it's in their best interests. It's a business owner's & sales rep's responsibility to make buying easy & compelling. In the realm of for-profit/profit-oriented businesses, only losers expect somebody to buy only for the business owners' benefit. If they want charity, they should be in non-profit organizations.
But even in charitable donations, people show their self-loyalty by giving what their self-images suggest they should & what they can afford. If they can afford to donate $100 for medical research & if they believe they're concerned about healing people who have a disease, they'll donate $100.
It's similar in retailing. If a person believes s/he is (wants/aspires to be) the kind of person who would wear a particular coat, & if s/he can afford it, s/he'll buy it.
What businesses need are regular customers who buy what they need/want because they're loyal to themselves. What business owners & sales reps better do is help people discover & decide their self-loyalty requires them to buy particular products/services.
Two concepts brought up in the other posts are very important - preference & trust. After preference & trust are inspired & established in consumers' minds, they may buy from a business or sales rep because it's a habit. It's convenient to form good habits & very inconvenient to change them. So, make the habit of buying from you easy to form & maintain. You can do this by consistently offering what specific people value.
I know there are many more issues to consider in what I've written here. I'm writing a post in a blog, not a book. 8^} You can read other posts to some of the other issues you should consider. I haven't written every pertinent issue. Doing it would require a book or the equivalent.
When people trust you & your motives, you can ask questions about them. When you know what they believe & want to believe (their aspirations) about themselves, you should determine if you currently or soon can offer what will help people believe good things about themselves.
A secondary appeal is what they want others to believe about them. Help them achieve what they want others to believe & they'll prefer buying from you & their trust in you will grow.
Thank you for using my blog. Please let me know if I should clarify anything.
Copyright 2008 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.
When you compete against big businesses with big budgets you need powerful marketing strategies & tactics. You'll find them here-
https://thriving-small-businesses.blogspot.com/
http://www.voy.com/31049/
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