EMBA的小眼睛

Two kinds of loyalty

The first kind of loyalty is the loyalty of convenience.

I'm going to look around, sure, but probably won't switch. Switching is risky, it's time consuming. Switching means a new account manager or moving my software or reprinting something. Switching means I might make a mistake or lose my miles or have to defend a new decision.

Corporations are getting ever better at building this sort of loyalty.

Then there's the other kind of loyalty. This is the loyalty of, "I'm not even looking."

This is the loyalty of, "I'm the kind of person that sticks with people who stick with me." This is the loyalty of someone who doesn't even want to know that there's a better deal somewhere else, because, after all, he's in it for the long haul.

The problem with the loyalty of convenience is that the customer is always tempted to look and look some more, and the vendor is always working to build barriers, barriers that don't necessarily increase satisfaction, but merely build a wall of hassle around the (now) trapped customer.

We don't have an common marketing term for this sort of feeling, but 'stuck' comes to mind.

The beauty of the second kind of loyalty, the loyalty of identity and satisfaction, is that the person who isn't even looking is committed, as committed to the relationship as the vendor is. You earn this sort of loyalty, you don't architect it.

You can only focus at creating on one sort of loyalty at a time, true?