How the internet broke down ideas of brand loyalty

I’m not an oddball in this respect. One way that our lives online have rewired our brains is that we’re more comfortable buying from an unfamiliar brand. And those same changing habits may also be making us less loyal to anything that we buy.

I was talking about this phenomenon recently with Josh Lowitz and Michael R. Levin, the co-founders of the research firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. We talked about the ways that online customer reviews, relatively low-cost social media advertising, and newer shopping destinations like Amazon and Instagram have reordered how we evaluate and buy products. It’s thrilling in many ways, and not so great in others.

Think about the ways that you might have bought something in the Before Times — like, before 2010. Maybe you drove to your local hardware store looking for a cordless drill, and it stocked only DeWalt models. You trusted the store to sell a good product — or if you didn’t, it was your only option anyway. That’s what you bought. The retailer essentially made the choice for you, Levin and Lowitz said.

That’s not usually how we shop anymore. Instead of having that solo choice, we can browse the gazillion cordless drills from our sofas and evaluate online customer reviews. Start-ups proved that a clever product and canny advertising can turn us away from old standbys. We don’t need the store to be the arbiter of what we buy anymore. 

In many ways, this is awesome. A one-person company might need only a Shopify website, listings on a Facebook page to compete with multinational conglomerates. Powerhouses like Nike or Levi’s can’t rest on their laurels for a century. We get more choices, are more open to trying something new and great products can break through. 

But like me and my coat, it may be harder than ever to form a lasting relationship. Maybe you bought the vacuum cleaner that you saw everywhere on TikTok, but will you ever buy from that company again? 

These young companies, as Lowitz described, “succeed in making sales but not customers.” What happens if companies focus solely on selling us something immediately, not on making us loyal customers? If companies need only to persuade us to buy something once, I wonder if it creates incentives to make meh products. 

There is also a cost to choices. There are more chances for us to get duped from bogus reviews or other online tricks. Sometimes, it’s a relief to have only one option of cordless drills rather than having to pick from an ocean of them online. 

Molson Hart, the owner of the educational toy company Viahart that I wrote about earlier this year, told me that he believed it was still possible to build a great brand with lasting customers. It just takes fresh skills. 

Products that might have been drive-by purchases on Amazon can encourage repeat buyers by tucking in welcome messages in the product packaging, or reaching out to people who post raves on social media, he said.

We don’t usually step back and think about why we buy certain products. When we do, it’s remarkable how much we’ve changed, and all the ways our habits have bent the shopping world.