Customer Loyalty: The Ultimate Brand Clash Weapon

As usual, this Wednesday the 'Economic Times' was delivered at my doorstep and as a habit, I was ready to throw it up on my bed to read it at the later half of the day as I was getting late for my class. But what caught my eyes was the much awaited, recently published MOST TRUSTED BRANDS list of Brand Equity (BE). This list deciphers the TOP 100 most trusted brands in India. Colgate once again became the unassailable brand leader for straight fourth year. The research was conducted by Nielsen along with BE with a design sample distributed across socio-economic classifications, age, income and geography.

The study was carried out at the following 12 cities:

Delhi, Lucknow, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Patna, Bhubaneswar, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Indore, Chennai, Bengaluru, Vijayawada.

The respondent profile were categorised as:

1. Chief Wage Earner(CWE)-The person who makes the highest contribution towards

    Household upkeep.

2. HouseWife (HW)-Any married female and unemployed

3. Youth-15-25 years old and not CWE/HW

4. OLDER- 26-60 years old  and not CWE/HW

Keeping track of its brand relationship is indeed the toughest task because one day the sky is clear blue and the next day it is hail-storm. We can easily relate it to the case of our beloved 2-minute noodle ‘Maggi’. The beloved brand that brings up all childhood, college, hostel and travel memories had entered the Top-5 list of ‘Most Trusted Brands’ 2014.The party wasn’t over yet, when the MSG got the best off it. It slipped down toweringly to 95^th position. Eventually, it turned out that ‘meri Maggi’ is safe and its Swiss mother Nestle is targeting the kitchen head of the household-the mother in-order to win back the ‘healthy’ faith every mother puts in a bowl of Maggi before serving it to her child. It is also trying to grab back its position through the much popular ‘#WeMissYouToo’ campaign. We can simply wait and watch whether it will script a Bollywood blockbuster and regain its top position or painfully crawl up the ladder.

It is not all about calamitous falls. Tata salt has risen to no.2 from 16 last year. The most popular ‘Desh ka namak’ focused on the nuts and bolts like merchandising norms, standardized POPs display windows at key outlets, etc.  all of  which has helped it to remain at the top.

Reckitt Benckiser’s, Dettol was voted as the 4^th most trusted brand. Dove strategy to keep it real has also rewarded it as it bagged the 4^th place compared tono.30 last year.

The most expected yet most dramatic setback is of the e-commerce brands, even a single one of them failed to gain a position. It was apparently proven that to gain customer loyalty and trust, it takes a hell lot than ‘BIG’ sales and bigger as budgets.

Some notified entries are that of the ‘mineral water’ brands and the grand entry of Idea Telco who has travelled a massive 131 spots up the ladder to no.43 to inch closer to its rivals Vodafone and Airtel.

Some other notable position holders are:

• Vim topped the list in ’househlod care’.
• Big Bazaar is the winner of the ‘Retailers’ category.
• Pizza Hut topped the ‘Food Services‘ list.
• Aquaguard bagged the trust in the ‘water purifier’section.

NOTE: The views expressed here are those of the author's and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of DOT as a whole.