Customer Loyalty, Customer Implies

Beyond Customer Loyalty: Creating Singing, Screaming, Money Spending Fans In today’s competitive arena, the battle to attract and retain customers is intense. Firms of all sizes continue revamping their product and service offerings, honing their customer service skills, and revising their loyalty programs. Yet few achieve an emotional connection with their customers.

Ask the most successful music acts of the past three decades about customer loyalty, and they’ll tell you it’s all about creating fans- people willing to stand in line for hours to buy the latest albums of their favorite bands or plunk down hundreds of dollars to buy concert tickets. Although this category of customer is not exclusive to the world of rock and roll, fans are far more prevalent and the lessons are more profuse than in the world of commerce.

Why? Because the music world is fan oriented; in fact the word customer is rarely used. Customer implies that a person walks into a store wanting to buy a CD and decides, after scanning the thousands of albums available, which one to snatch up. A fan walks into the store with the intent of buying the latest Alanis Morissette CD; the person made the decision long before he or she entered the store, because the fan’s desire is not just to buy the latest music but to create a further connection with a particular band or performer. Often the need is even more innate-helping people deal with emotions and express what they are feeling, achieving what Hallmark does in written communication and human emotion.

Although all firms in business today have customers, only the most successful have fans. Why all the interest in creating fans? Because of the effect attitudes and buying behavior have on long term sales and profit levels. In short, customers buy from a variety of retailers and choose many brands, often influenced by temporary price breaks or other promotions. Firms spend more promotional dollars securing purchases from cherry pickers (whose tendency to buy a specific brand can be described as sporadic at best) than they do capturing more sales from loyal or frequent customers. Friends (loyal customers) tend to buy certain brands and shop specific stores more often than others-often because of good past experiences. Loyalty programs have helped retailers and consumer product companies foster relationships with consumers and modify their cherry picking behavior.