Arguably the hottest thing in marketing right now is the use of machine learning /AI to identify primary customers and personalize the customer experience. The capacity for technology to learn and predict customer preferences and needs enables marketing leads to feel as though they are relating to customers as individuals and, by extension, building personal connection between their brand and the customer.
This would be great news for brands, if only it made sense. It does not.
Certainly, the more precisely machine learning/AI can predict customer preference, the more likely the customer experience can be enhanced. And certainly, if an organization delivers a positive experience consistently, the “brand” will be associated with a positive experience. In this way, the brand can build a reputation that draws customers to return for yet another positive experience.
But the capacity for brand building via machine learning/AI ends there. This is because “experience” and “reputation” are only a part of the equation that comprises brand loyalty, and relatively tenuous ones at that.
I have recently enjoyed my interaction or experience with both Verizon and Bank of America because their representatives have been polite, helpful, and have anticipated many of my needs. The quality of the product has been consistent and somewhat tailored and the service has been competent. However, if another entity offered me a better deal (because of its ability to predict my needs) and was also nice, polite, consistent and competent, I would switch in a heartbeat. Why? I have no connection with the Verizon or Bank of America brands. As brands, they either mean nothing to me or represent something negative with respect to how I want or need the world to be.
Brands are, and always have been, cultural symbols. They build a true loyal following if and when the values people seek to promote and perpetuate are embodied in the brand and the brand can then be used to amplify the values dear to the individual or group. Think Nike, Apple or Patagonia. As cultural symbols, brands afford customers the ability to leverage them to further their own values and, by extension, strengthen their chances for shaping the world in a way that ensures survival for themselves and their loved ones, or even their companies.
Brand loyalty is the difference between having a customer who is using you temporarily for an immediate need or desire (price, location, expediency, experience), and a lifetime customer who invests in your brand (willing to pay more, willing to excuse mistakes) because, well, because of the brand. When people invest in other people because they recognize a connection or kindred alignment of values or purpose, we call this rapport. It is rapport that is the gateway to brand loyalty.
To understand better the limits of machine learning/AI to build brand loyalty, let’s look at one schematic of how and why humans make the decisions they do. Below is a figure that represents the scaffolding that underlies human decision-making. (You may have an alternative concept of how decisions come to be made, but this is my post, so we will use my schematic.)
