‘If marketers can increase brand engagement, they’ll ALWAYS see positive consumer behaviour’

In its new ‘2016 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index’ (CLEI) New York-based firm Brand Keys says that engagement, particularly emotionally, correlates with brand profitability, but that personal care brands need to make sure their focus is correct.

“If a marketer can increase brand engagement – particularly the emotional values – they’ll always see positive consumer behaviour in the marketplace. Always,” ​says Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys.

“Axiomatically, brands that can do that always earn greater market share and are more profitable than the competition. To succeed, marketers need to accurately answer these questions, ‘what drives my category, what are the emotional engagement values I need to focus on, how can my brand exceed consumer expectations for those emotional values?’”​

“To their detriment, most brands rely largely on imagery or entertainment as proxies for emotional engagement. They’re not the same things!”​ he adds.

Consumer engagement​

For the 2016 survey, 42,792 consumers self-selected the categories in which they are consumers, and the brands they opt for, before engagement and loyalty assessments are identified to measure how well brands meet expectations for each category-specific Ideal.

The CLEI brand lists aren’t pre-determined. Consumers tell Brand Keys researchers which brands they actually use. When consumers mention new brands at a significant level, it’s an indicator that current options do not meet their needs.

And when that happens, consumers look to other brands to do that for them. “Today it’s the emotional side of that equation brands need to concentrate on,”​ notes Passikoff. “The rational stuff is easy. Profitability has become far more difficult.”​

In the Mass cosmetics category, Neutrogena came out on top for meeting the ideal of ‘nurturing I deserve’; while Chanel was seen as the leader in luxury cosmetics engagement, for ‘Innovative & effortless transformation.’

Passikoff explains that the consumer engagement process today is more dependent on emotional values than it has been before as rational attributes have become price-of-entry ‘givens’ for today’s consumers, and emotional values have become more problematic for brands to accurately determine and engage with.

The emotional values have a big effect as they describe how consumers view the category, and will ultimately see people compare brands, which affects how they will engage, buy,  and remain loyal.

With an increasing number of brands appearing in consumers’ consideration sets, Passikoff says that this shows how volatile the market can be for brands, and how important it can be to engage the consumer correctly.