Question

Using a personal example, explain how brand loyalty has relaxed your standards when it comes to claim-belief discrepancy. Explain the example, and the ultimate outcome - did you purchase the new product from your favorite brand? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Once a customer is loyal to a brand, he/she will find every possible communication from the brand in a positive manner and try to avoid questioning the standards even though there might be a difference in its past products compared to the newly launched products.

Every brand claims of providing various features and most of the times these are exaggarated, solely aimed at attracting customers. But there can be discrepancies in the claims and the actual features which might be noticed by a new buyer or customer. The same doesn't apply to a loyal customer of the brand who looks up for the brand to always be good.

My personal example of relaxing standards for a product from a brand which I always looked up to is -

Paytm which is an e-wallet and e-commerce company In India that offered extensive cashback on the purchase of products initially for over an year leading to repurchase multiple times to use the cashback offered. The firm had to compromise on the profits to establish a loyal customer base and it was able to achieve the customer base that it aimed for. I have done extensive shopping in Paytm for various product categories including fashion and clothing, household items, electronic appliances, mobile and laptop accessories etc.

Once the firm created a huge loyal customer base, it slowly started applying shipping charges on all the products amounting to 5-10 % of the cashback it was offering. Due to my psychological perception of how the cashback can be used for future purchases, I didn't bother much on the shipping costs and still continued with purchases. This is an example of how the brand is able to create a psychological goodwill about the brand.

Yes, I still keep purchasing various products from the website though there exists shipping costs that offset a percentage of cashback leading to a lesser cashback compared to the previous purchases.