Brand Loyalty

[aarondmsu]

There are two components to brand rating: brand awareness and brand loyalty. I've had no problem building brand awareness. Brand loyalty, on the other hand, has proven more difficult. I am assuming that brand loyalty is more solidified and resilient than brand awareness (correct me if I'm wrong). As such, if you can build a strong brand loyalty rating, you should be able to maintain your overall brand rating more easily. For example, take two scenarios where overall brand rating is 75:

Example 1: Brand Awareness=50 and Brand Loyalty=25
Example 2: Brand Awareness=25 and Brand Loyalty=50

If my theory is correct, it should take less advertising spending to maintain the overall brand rating in example 2 than it would to maintain it in example 1.

So assuming all that is true (again, please correct me if this is all a false premise), how does one go about building a strong brand loyalty?

[Esoteric Rogue]

how does one go about building a strong brand loyalty?

Did you check the manual? In general, I'd say to build brand loyalty you must 1) build brand awareness, 2) have high quality product, 3) Have a significant share of the market, 4) Use corporate branding. Now, you don't have to use corporate, but it sure helps. Here's the part of the manual excluding the section on brand awareness, and including the intro to Brand Strategy. Sorry that the cut and paste doesn't have any formatting to look nice, Ill bold a couple parts.

Brand Loyalty Factors
Brand loyalty is based mainly on the following factors:
Brand Awareness
Brand loyalty cannot exist without the prior purchase and use of a product.
The brand must first generate sufficient awareness for the consumers
purchase and use the product. The higher the awareness, the more people
will try the product, and the faster the rate at which the loyalty can increase.
114
Manufactured Goods
The quality of manufactured goods depends of two factors:
• The quality of raw materials
• The production technology level of the factory
See Page 47 (Chapter 4, Manufacturing Unit)
Crops
Crop product quality is consistent among different farms. The quality does
increase, however, as a farm accumulates experience. A farm with higher
unit levels produces better-quality crop products
Livestock Products
Livestock product quality is consistent among different farms. The quality
does increase, however, as a farm accumulates experience. A farm with
higher unit levels produces better-quality livestock products.
Raw Materials
For raw materials such as timber, crude oil, coal, chemicals, or metals, the
quality is determined by the quality of natural resource reserves.
Brand
A brand is a distinguishing name and/or symbol intended to identify and
differentiate a seller’s products from competitors’ products. A well
established brand is a valuable, intangible asset. For some products, a
consumer may judge a product mainly by its brand.
A brand rating represents the overall value of a brand. This rating is the sum
of the brand awareness rating and the brand loyalty rating. These two
ratings are described in detail in the following sections.
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness measures consumers’ knowledge that a particular brand
exists. People will often buy a familiar brand because they feel more
comfortable with it. They may assume that a product with a familiar brand is
reliable, of reasonable quality, and that it is produced by a company with a
reputation for having been in the marketplace a long time.
113
Corporate Brand
If the corporation uses a single umbrella brand for all its products, the
corporation does not start from scratch in building up awareness of the
brand identity for a new product. The investment required in the line
accordingly reduced.
Although this strategy offers major savings in the time and resources
required to build a new brand from scratch and improves the cost
effectiveness of resources spent on supporting the brand family, it is not
without drawbacks.
Its major drawback is that the corporation is not perceived as a dedicated
provider of a single category of product. Consumers may doubt the devotion
of the corporation to the product and their loyalty to the brand may thus be
reduced.
In addition, when a corporation extends its product lines to others markets,
it becomes more difficult for the corporation to maintain the quality and
consistency of its products. Failure to maintain quality and consistency
results in damage to the brand as a whole. The risk increases if the
corporation extends its product lines across markets of different product
classes.
Range Brand
Under the strategy, products in the same product class are labeled with a
single range brand.
The range brand strategy enjoys the same benefits and drawbacks as the
corporate brand strategy, but to a lesser extent. These effects are limited
because the number of products a range brand covers is smaller. The range
brand strategy is preferable to the corporate brand strategy if the quality of
your corporation’s products varies substantially across different product
classes. On the other hand, if you are confident that the quality of your
products can be maintained, then the corporate brand strategy may be a
better choice.
116
Product Quality
If a customer is satisfied after using the product, brand loyalty increases.
Conversely, a bad experience with a product will lead to a decrease in brand
loyalty or sometimes even negative brand loyalty (the customer will avoid
buying the same brand in the future). In addition, customers will only be loyal
to a brand if products of the brand have consistent quality.
Brand Scope
If a brand covers a variety of products, the corporation is not perceived as a
dedicated provider of a single category of products. Consumers may doubt the
devotion of the corporation to that product and their loyalty to the brand may
thus be reduced. See “Brand Strategy” below for details on brand scope.
Brand Strategy
Your corporation can select one of three brand strategies in Capitalism II:
•Corporate Brand.A corporation uses a single umbrella brand for all its
products.
• Range Brand.A single brand covers a range of products within the same
product class.
• Unique Brand.Each product has a unique brand.

[aarondmsu]

Thanks. I had all of those elements except for significant market share.

[azxcvbnm321]

Are you sure corporate branding strategy is best for creating brand loyalty? From my experience, only unique branding strategy can sustain brand loyalty (given all other factors in place).

[mikah2001]

im also had a hard time to use the corporate brand strategy....i switched to the unique brand and my brand loyalty is above my competitors.....had experiment it many times and it's works, i will never use that corporate branding