South African consumers, like many others across the world, have been forced to tighten their belts as the daily cost of living continues to soar.
From the never-ending fuel hikes and increase in essential grocery items, consumers are often left in a vulnerable place where affordability becomes the key driver when choosing which merchants to purchase from.
Essentially this shows how brand loyalty is no longer enough and how consumers prefer brands that meet their ever-changing needs.
Trust and accountability
Trust is the most important form of currency in today’s business landscape as consumers want to support brands that show accountability when a crisis occurs and brands that do not discriminate against anyone in any form. Consumers need to know that companies have their best interest at heart and in the era of ever rising food costs, those businesses that will not compromise the quality of their products over profits.
Salesforce recently conducted a survey where 13 020 consumers and 3 916 business buyers across 29 countries were surveyed to show how businesses can communicate with their customers in the best way possible which highlighted the below results.
- Evolution of trust and loyalty in customer-brand relationships
- Customers balancing their expectations for personalisation versus privacy
- What a digital-first customer experience looks like across the customer lifecycle
Cancel culture
The cancel culture has become so rife in South Africa that companies, especially those that have a strong online presence, often endure. Consumers, especially those on apps like Twitter will often advocate negatively for brands (to be cancelled) for poor service.
While nothing serious ever happens to these brands, social media sentiments remain low and this creates an overall negative perception of the brand. With that being said, because consumers are price sensitive they do often return to these brands.
Brand agility
With the ever-changing consumer needs, companies need to show their ability to adapt to the current consumer climate and cater to their needs at a cost most suitable without compromising on the quality of the service.
Kind to the environment
Customers around the world have become conscious of the brands they support and look to supporting brands that have similar interests to them. Current sustainable trends include poverty eradication, climate change and animal cruelty. An example of this is NESTLE’s RE (Rethink, Reduce and Repurpose) sustainability project that prioritises sustainable packaging, involves communities and aspires to a waste free future.
Customers will stop supporting companies that do not show their support to making the environment they live in a better place for everyone.
Loyalty programmes
Loyalty programmes or rather, rewards, have become popular as a customer lead and retention mechanism. Consumers prefer to buy from merchants that offer rewards and in most cases those that give rewards in the form of cash. In today’s economy, customers are appreciative of brands that offer rewards that make a real difference in their daily running costs. FNB has recently boosted their eBucks fuel rewards to R2 per litre from R1 to cushion the blow faced by customers from the never-ending fuel increments.
Brand loyalty in my opinion has changed from what we know it as, customers are only loyal to the brands and services that are aligned with their budget and beliefs and are not easily swayed. With the current rate of inflation, the sad reality is that some customers often must compromise on their most basic needs which will often mean long term health side effects.
Charmaine Moratho is a media planner at Meta Media, a full service media agency, providing award-winning communications solutions for clients. Meta Media provides strategy, planning, and buying across both traditional and digital media platforms.
