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Building successful relationships with your customers is not just something you do at one point in time, but throughout the entire customer journey. In fact, the nature of the relationship actually evolves throughout the customer journey. As an organization, you can consciously focus on these four types of relationship in order to strengthen the value of your brand.
In his blog The anatomy of a purchase Miro Slodki points out that it is important for marketers to be able to respond to four basic types of relationships that customers can have with a brand. The sum of those four types of relationships reinforces brand equity, or the value the brand has.
The nature of the relationship evolves throughout the customer journey: from share of heart (emotional, why we love the brand) to share of mind (rational, why we respect the brand) to share of wallet (why we buy the brand now) to the ultimate goal: share of life (why we remain loyal).
From a business perspective, you can consider these relationships as buyer, consumer, customer and partner. The characteristics of the relationship determine to which elements of the brand value chain someone is more receptive and what kind of psychological language we best use in our communication. It is true, however, that the nature of the relationship evolves during the journey. In this sense, the customer journey is a useful tool to customize the relationship at the right time and place, while also connecting to the underlying Human Drivers, which can also evolve during the journey.
For these customers or prospects, emotional messages (joy, humor, sadness, anger …) play an important role. They want to buy, consume or use more than just a product. The relationship with the brand gives meaningful significance to their lives. Apple is perhaps the best-known example. Dell, on the other hand, is an example of a brand that wants to evolve from a share of wallet over a share of mind to a share of heart relationship.
Here the relationship is based on rational differences that are meaningful to consumers. Consider, for example, the market for automobile tires, where considerations such as wear resistance, stopping distance and so on are involved. These consumers often attach great importance to third-party experiences.
This is a purely transactional relationship, where the buyer (or shopper) purchases our product based solely on our offer at that moment. Sometimes a buyer does repurchase, but only because we have the appropriate offer at that time and place. For example, think of a refuelling at a gas station or a “2 + 1” promotion at the department store. That may well be a profitable relationship, but it is purely transaction-driven.
This is perhaps the most complex customer relationship, as the share-of-life relationship is eventually the ultimate goal of our Act Human strategy. While all of the previous relationships focus primarily on the “I,” here the “we” is central. It is a partnership relationship, a mix of the three previous ones. Mutual assistance and cocreation determine the dynamics of the relationship. This does not guarantee 100% customer loyalty, but the brand does have a preferred position in his eyes.
Knowing that there are four customer-brand relationships that evolve throughout the customer journey, as a Human Activator it comes down to adapting to the mindset associated with each stage of this journey, thus strengthening the relationship step by step. With the ultimate goal of becoming a part of the customer’s life.
The customer journey can play a valuable role in this: it is a useful tool to align the relationship with the situation at this time and place: from share of wallet (why we buy the brand) over share of heart (emotional, why we love the brand) to share of mind (rational, why we respect the brand) to the ultimate goal, share of life (why we remain loyal).
Want more insight into how your organization can leverage the four brand relationships for strong brand equity? Feel free to contact us to arrange an introduction!
Meanwhile, want to further explore customer journey mapping? Definitely read our blog article The customer journey mapped out.
Or more broadly discover how to build successful customer relationships? Read all about it in our book, ‘Act Human’.
