Fundamentals of Marketing: Build Brand Awareness

I use to be Loyal to shopping at Lowe’s because I had a store credit card. However, after going to The Home Depot several times, I noticed that The Home Depot had certain products that Lowe’s did not, and Walmart would sometimes have the same type of paint or tools for a lower price. Hence, I started to be more aware of other products and not solely have loyalty to one store. I do not have a certain brand that I only shop from, I have several clothes brands, and several cleaning supplies from different brands. If I am shopping for something new I usually read the label and disregard the brand, but If it is an ongoing product I purchase, I would usually keep purchasing it if it did what I intended to use it for well and for a decent price. After a while of using the same brand or product I usually change brands just to test other brands and see which one I would prefer.

Building Trust in a Brand

Building brand loyalty aims to create long-term growth and ambassadors that support a company brand.  Loyal clients are associated with recommending a company to other friendly customers to support future development, launches, and talking about the brand on social media platforms. Brand loyalty enhances a company's growth and in sustaining long-term growth (Kuchinka et al., 2018). Customers who show and exhibit brand loyalty are highly devoted to the company services and products through repeatedly buying regardless of other arising competitive situations. Companies require and demand loyal clients who go to the extent of inviting family members and friends.

Additionally, loyal clients always spend more money purchasing similar products and services from their particular organizations due to the quality and improved services offered by the company. Trust is the ultimate determinant in the world of marketing and business. Companies can achieve loyalty through well-executed and designed programs that assist them in retaining customers, reducing turnover, attracting new ones, and reducing loss of the customers. Companies can build trust in their clients by ensuring customer satisfaction, product–customer involvement, brand trust, and perceived quality.  Additionally, companies apply loyalty programs that ensure clients are rewarded based on their spending rate. Organizations should ensure they reduce buyer power (Huo et al., 2019). This can be achieved by alternating and manipulating switching prices that might make the customers reluctant to switch to other services and products. Companies can psychologically influence customer buying behavior by improving on clients’ attitudes, perceptions, and purchasing intentions while buying their products. The organization of a company should establish trust in customers and employees through being honest and open about changes within the organization that might impact them.

Ethical issues and Obligations

Organizations are developed to offer the best quality services and products to all people, and they have to be honest to each other. Therefore, when a company takes ethical issues seriously by building the company around integrity and trust while complying with the set regulations, it can maintain the existing customers and gain new potential customers due to referrals from the existing customers. Companies have great obligations to their customers even after brand loyalty is built, and should ensure health and safety to their customers is always maintained (Hasan & Al Mamun, 2014). Companies should refrain from cutting corners in order to cut down the cost of production or perform tasks faster which may lead to delivering substandard goods and services to customers, which is unethical behavior. Companies should also avoid price fixation where the company agrees with the competitors to raise, lower prices, or stabilize prices and competitive terms. The fixation of prices is unethical as every company should make its prices for its customers without collaborating with the competitors.

The companies should also avoid unfair advertising involving deception leading to misrepresentation of the product leading to a negative effect on customers. The companies should avoid unfair pricing-based methods which have hidden fees and surcharges. The companies should also avoid other methods of deception like manipulation of measurement units making the customers pay for less what they had ordered or getting items that are substandard, over sized packaging with misleading labels and packaging graphics that mislead the customer, inconsistent comparison, manipulation of terms, illustrations that are misleading and false coloring (Kushwaha et al. 2020). The business should also ensure that it does not deviate from its basic philosophy of protecting consumer interest. Therefore, the firm should ensure that it delivers what it had promised or what it promises. Lastly, following the set standards and ethical issues in all aspects of business is very important and all the companies should build their foundation on integrity and honesty.

Consumer Trust in Companies

Companies should give a reason to be trusted, and compete with its competitors for quality, transparency, and their impact to consumers and the environment. I believe that consumers should have the ability to trust what is being marketed by companies and companies should be obligated to follow the laws in false marketing and remain ethical in the information they provide to their consumers. We as consumers should also conduct due diligence and being informed of possible misguiding advertising and how we are targeted by companies in order to be more informed shoppers.

Some Consumers May Be Prone To Be Loyal To Companies

I do believe that some consumers are more likely to become loyal to companies. Just because I do not shop with only one company does not mean other consumers are the same. We all have different perspectives on companies, products, and the ability to shop around at from different companies. I have meet friends whom only shop online at Amazon, but I would rather shop directly from the retailers website.

References

Huo, B., Tian, M., Tian, Y., & Zhang, Q. (2019). The dilemma of inter-organizational relationships: Dependence, use of power and their impacts on opportunism. International Journal of Operations & Production Management.

Kuchinka, D. G., Balazs, S., Gavriletea, M. D., & Djokic, B. B. (2018). Consumer attitudes toward sustainable development and risk to brand loyalty. Sustainability, 10(4), 997.

Hasan, M. N., & Al Mamun, C. A. (2014) Ethical Issues Related To Consumers. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing & Management Review ISSN, 2319, 2836.

Kushwaha, B. P., Singh, R. K., Tyagi, V., & Singh, V. N. (2020). Ethical Relationship Marketing in the Domain of Customer Relationship Marketing. No. April, 16573-16584.

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