Every brand owner wants their product or service to represent more than a price tag. The question is: how do you extend your brand's selling proposition beyond functional attributes such as price?

The brand on the left hand side has succeeded in doing more than merely satisfying its customers. The intimacy, emotion and conviction of the comments indicate that its customers enjoy durable and meaningful associations with the brand.

In other words, the customers have formed a relationship with the brand.

Loyalty Works Both Ways

Customer-brand relationships are important because they signify an enduring commitment to one another. Implicit in this association is the expectation that both will be loyal (customer loyalty is often viewed as a one-way street) and each will carry certain responsibilities to support the other.

Building Relationships

The Relationship Investment Model™ (RIM) identifies how customers form relationships with your brand, and quantifies the strength and quality of those relationships over time.

We attach business markers to these associations so that you can identify the marketing and operational drivers that influence the overall strength of your customer-brand relationships.

Relationships are hard work. Any successful relationship requires mutual consideration and constant nurturing. So then how do customers commit to
– or invest themselves in – relationships with a brand?

The same way they do with friends, loved ones, and family:
the key is trust.

Successful brands have a holistic perspective of the customer experience
and customer-brand relationships. While many brands focus on the practical attributes that drive customer satisfaction, this only appeals to one aspect of
a customer's purchase motive: functional consideration. This has created a society of ‘satisfied’ consumers that are not necessarily loyal but pragmatic

in their purchase decisions. They are heavily swayed by price, promotion and convenience.

To create customers that are invested with the brand and, importantly, loyal, brands must earn customers’ trust. Trust is built by consistently meeting the functional needs of the customer, and creating a sense of fidelity by demonstrating that the brand has the customer’s best interests at heart.

Only when a brand succeeds in gaining a customer’s trust (the customer develops strong functional and personal connections) that customers commit to long-term relationships with the brand.

Customers with strong Relationship Investment in their brands exhibit desired behaviors:

• More loyal
• Impervious to competitive offers
• Go the extra mile to shop the brand
• Greater multi-channel interactions
• Greater share of wallet
• Less sensitive to price
• Forgive occasional failures

RIM™ allows brand owners to optimize the customer experience and identify the factors that drive high levels of Relationship Investment and ultimately, profitable behaviors. These conclusions have powerful implications for your customer and brand strategy:

• Who is likely to defect from your brand?
• Which of your competitors' customers should you target?
• Which should you avoid?
• How is the strength of your customer relationships linked to your company's profitability?
• What marketing or operational levers under your control impact customer Relationship Investment?
• What is the financial return on marketing or operational investments made to improve customer Relationship Investment?