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Home / Insights / Thought Leadership / The Scarcity Paradox: How Abundance is Killing Brand Loyalty and What Businesses Must do to Survive
December 6, 2023 - by Mark Emery
The problem of scarcity is central to the construct of government, society, and culture. Our most significant evolutionary advancements as a species have been in response to scarcity. Scarcity of food. Of natural resources. Of shelter. It is this fear of scarcity that has compelled brands across industries to resort to abundance. But this abundance, without informed customer insights analysis, is causing brand loyalty to die a slow death!
Technology has largely solved the most important problems of scarcity. A sustainable energy future today seems less utopian and increasingly inevitable. There is more than enough food to solve worldwide hunger – only bad actors and geopolitics stand in the way. There is more information in your pocket than you could ever expect to access in a lifetime.
In the blink of an evolutionary eye, the problem of scarcity has been supplanted by the plague of abundance. Choices abound. For everything. Amazon has over 600 million SKUs. Who you date is no longer limited to where you go to school or work or who you might run into at the grocery store. Our brains have evolved to seek, but technology demands we choose:
Marketing’s grail of making “customers for life” seems comically naive amidst this backdrop of abundance. The pursuit of it is a quixotic path littered with pitfalls, short-term thinking, and spent dry-erase markers. Increasing marketing ROI amid such abundance is burdensome.
The challenges facing brands in today’s era are growing multifold. While many resort to short-term measures like rewards or loyalty programs, they don’t create brand loyalty. On the contrary, they harm it. Brands end up competing based on the comparative financials of a rewards program, not the experience of the product. In the long run, such tactics erode profit margins, dilute the brand, and turn off their best, most loyal customers.
The most effective loyalty program is understanding what your best customers tell their friends and family about your brand and pouring marketing resources into ensuring that the story is reflected and amplified at every customer touchpoint, analog and digital. And unless these rich insights, derived from thorough customer insights analysis, guide what you do from a product, marketing, sales, service, and operations perspective, your loyalty program is probably just lip service.
Rich customer insights are what can take brand loyalty to the ultimate level. Using insights, brands can better understand what their customers really want. Based on this understanding, they can tailor their marketing campaigns and customize products and services. They can create long-term value by building trust, enabling personalized experiences, and engaging customers more profoundly. The right insights can also drive solid margins for brands and help them grow their share of the customer wallet.
As businesses struggle to differentiate themselves in the sea of established and emerging companies (and products), the ability to capture and analyze consumer habits delivers tremendous benefits. By identifying, predicting, and addressing factors that influence purchases, brands can better understand customer demographics, craft tailored messaging, and boost brand loyalty and satisfaction.
Original Article posted on Macquarium, Inc.
Mark Emery is Senior Director and Client Partner specializing in CX at Synoptek. With over twenty years in digital and experiential marketing and sales, Mark has collaborated with top-tier brands like IHG, American Express, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, and others. His strength lies in his versatile approach—he navigates challenges by combining creative thinking, technical expertise, and a practical mindset to create effective solutions that resonate.
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