New Book Reveals Why Consumers Bond With Brands

"Married to the Brand illuminates a leading-edge method to quantify customer feelings and emotions, which are the foundation for a healthy brand marriage."

Simon Cooper
President and Chief Operating Officer
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C.

"Married to the Brand provides a great strategic framework to measure and manage one of a company's greatest strategic assets: the relationship between a brand and its consumers."

Lynda Firey-Oldroyd
Vice President, Consumer Insights
Gap Inc.

From Target to Toyota and from Starbucks to Sony, brands are a part of everything we do -- and much of our shopping experience is spent navigating a vast landscape of logos, ads, packages, and sales pitches. In this landscape, everyone has brands that garner their loyalty and brands they couldn't care less about. Some of us choose the least expensive paper towels while driving miles out of our way for a cup of Starbucks coffee. Some of us couldn't care less about coffee, but wouldn't be caught dead using generic laundry detergent.

The pursuit of brand devotion has driven companies to spend many millions of dollars every year on advertising, celebrity endorsements, loyalty programs, and fancy Web sites. The result? Most companies still aren't emotionally connecting with their customers.

In bookstores next month from Gallup Press, Married to the Brand: Why Consumers Bond With Some Brands for Life, by William J. McEwen, draws on more than 60 years of research from The Gallup Organization to examine how and why we connect to the products we use and the brands we buy. This research demonstrates that customer satisfaction is woefully insufficient when the goal is an ongoing exclusive relationship between a customer and a brand. "Good" performance is no longer enough, and one purchase in no way guarantees that another will follow. Instead, an enduring relationship between a company and a customer has four prerequisites. Together, these add up to an emotional connection that is both powerful and profitable:

• Confidence: Consumers must feel that a brand is one they can always trust and one that will always deliver on whatever it promises.
  
  
• Integrity: Consumers must feel that the brand treats them fairly -- as they've earned the right to be treated. And they must believe that the company stands resolutely behind its products and services. They must feel that if a problem ever arises, the company will fix it.
  
  
• Pride: Consumers must feel proud to be associated with the brand -- proud to be known as a brand owner, shopper, or user. They must be convinced that the brand and its representatives will always treat them with respect.
  
  
• Passion: The consumer must feel that the brand is irreplaceable in their lives and represents a perfect fit with their needs, whether those needs are tangible or intangible. In fact, they should feel that their world really wouldn't be the same without it.

These four aspects of an enduring customer relationship must be reinforced wherever, whenever, and however companies touch their customers. At its very core, however, the relationship between a brand and its buyers is visceral and emotional. It derives not just from the product and its features, but from the experience that surrounds its purchase and use.

While these relationships are certainly affected by the classic four Ps of marketing (Product, Place, Price, and Promotion), McEwen underscores the fact that those four Ps merely represent the tip of the relationship-building iceberg. The most important aspect of a great many purchases, one that leads consumers to "marry" a brand, is a fifth "P" -- People.

"These people," writes McEwen, "may be visible to consumers, they may be voices heard on the phone, or they may just be names on an e-mail response. They live the brand, and in the eyes of many customers, they are the brand."

Married to the Brand tells the story of what makes brand relationships work and what makes them profitable -- and tells it through the eyes of the consumer, not the marketer. Packed with stories and compelling discoveries from a worldwide consumer database, this book explores why people bond with some brands but not with others. It also includes an online test that enables readers to discover if they are married to a brand -- or on the brink of a divorce (online at http://gmj.gallup.com/book_center/MTTB/).

An invaluable tool for anyone interested in brand building and relationship management, Married to the Brand is a groundbreaking new book that shows that a company's top job today is not to "satisfy" its customers nor even to create the repeat purchases typically thought of as evidence of "loyalty." Rather, the single most important job for any company is to engage its customers. That means attracting the right customers -- the prospects who will make great marriage candidates. And it means building emotional bonds with them through each and every point of customer contact. As Married to the Brand points out, these customers are the company's only real assets in today's marketing world, where brutal competition meets a still-challenging economy.

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About the Author

William J. McEwen, Ph.D., is a Global Practice Leader at The Gallup Organization, where he consults with major clients on brand communications and brand equity management. Before joining Gallup, he spent 25 years in senior planning and account management positions with leading advertising agencies, including McCann-Erickson, FCB, and D'Arcy. McEwen's brand experience ranges from snack foods and beer to computers and business banking. He received a doctorate from Michigan State University and was a tenured faculty member at the University of Connecticut. He lives in Newport Beach, California.

For more information, contact:

Contact: Barbara Cave Henricks
Goldberg McDuffie Business
512-301-8936 or bhenricks@goldbergmcduffie.com