Your win-win approach is, of course, the ideal framework for a healthy, and long-lasting customer relationship. Alas, I feel that many of these commercial relationships are more like the “out-smarting” contest that you reference at the start of your note.

Reminds me of a recent Dilbert cartoon, at the end of which a “clever” sales person proudly exclaims “well, it’s not really “selling” if we both win”.

check out cartoon at…. http://www.dilbert.com/2009-12-01/

It will be interesting to see whether the newly empowered customers, armed with comparative data, online coupons, and mobile-device enabled price searching, will come to feel much better about their buying experiences this year. Maybe they will feel like the “winners, this time around??

you are absolutely correct to concentrate on behavior…for at least 4 reasons

1) behavior can be triggered quickly; attitudes can less malleable, and accrue over time
2) there is considerable evidence for the weak and often contradictory relationship between attitudes and behavior
3) behavior is more easily measured, and less open to interpretation
4) as your rightly say, you can take behavior to the bank

once can easily argue that a strong attitudinal component is, in fact, one of the outcomes of repeated positive transactions… to badly paraphrase a multi-sourced quote “if you got ‘em by the POS, their hearts and minds will follow”…

Great post!

Yes. CPG folks get the whole idea of repeat… a way to drive frequency. It is becoming important in other sectors as a more pragmatic way to drive the core of their business.

Zain

It was nice to hear someone acknowledge frequency marketing as a viable marketing tool. I have always endorse this especially for certain categories in the Packaged Goods area. While at Post cereal we had our frequency planned very carefully for all our cereal trade and consumer events. It does create loyaly abeit defined differently. It is about transcations and if your brand has many competitorsand is used frequently by the consumer you must have a solid frequency marketing plan.

Bill Fasano

Today’s customer is less likely to spend and more likely to be discerning when they do which has further widened the profitability gap between maintaining existing customers and acquiring a reluctant new one.  Traditional loyalty problems are a g…

Good comment. I do agree that we need to use technology and innovations to shrink the gap between the required infrastructure and our needs.

Zain

Zain

Some specific reactions… we should be trying as an ideal, or as best as possible, to strive for “the Norm effect”. Can you make your brand as inviting as “Cheers”???, a place where you are well known, and “everybody knows your name”, This environment provides both relevance and recognition.

More importantly, these two elements can be their own reward ….Your customers might not need frequent flyer points, or expensive reward programs. Getting comped occasionally by your bar tender might just do the trick…. Or even having a wave from the chef at your favorite restaurant.. each of these removes you from the herd, makes you feel special, and warrants your return business and support.
Likewise, with service. It has been reported that that the most loyal customers are not the ones that have never experienced problems with you, but those few that have had their troubles taken care of quickly and painlessly.

Lastly, traditional “reward” programs have the seeds of their own destruction built within them. Typically, they reward expenditures, or volume of some sort… so you get credits just for showing up. As these chits pile up, they change the dynamics of the relationship, simply because they can accrue real value (e.g. airline miles). They become the reason for the relationship.. not the brand, not the experience. Self-attribution theory has plenty to say about explaining the reasons for one’s behavior. And given a strong external explanation, it can become the dominant one . It doesn’t build a strong brand bond by helping your customers say “I did it for the miles, or the points, or the sweepstakes entry”. Better for your customers to say, “I did it because I like them”. And why might they feel that way??? Because they think that you like them too.