Commitment‐led Marketing: The Key to Brand Profits is in the Customer’s Mind

Citation

Chamberlin, D.P. (2002), "Commitment‐led Marketing: The Key to Brand Profits is in the Customer’s Mind", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 74-82. https://doi.org/10.1108/jcm.2002.19.1.74.2

There is a classic magazine cartoon showing two physicists before an immense blackboard covered with lines and lines of a complex formula. Near the end of the formula is a blank space, to which one physicist points and explains, “And right here a miracle happens!” I could not help thinking of that great leap of faith in reviewing Hofmeyr and Rice’s Commitment‐Led Marketing. Its sub‐title indicates the area of my faithlessness: and just how, please, sirs, does one find out what’s in the mind of the consumer?

This is not to say the book is so without foundation as to be useless to the marketer. In fact, the authors explore consumer commitment in a very revealing manner, which provides even the most experienced marketing veteran with new insights into the dimensions of consumer commitment to her brands. I even had an epiphany about why my wife and I differ on our denominational preference among churches, and indeed, the authors often use politics and other very personal choices to illustrate their points. So the scope of their term “commitment” is considerably broader than laundry detergent preferences.

But at the end of the day (as I am sure these two South African authors would say), the whole measurement of commitment on which their marketing recommendations are based comes down to determining the strength of one’s brand convictions and one’s true feelings about the value of the alternative brands available. That’s where the “miracle” has to happen; that is the gap in their theory. We marketers have been trying for generations to measure what is in the consumer’s mind, and any honest psychologists could have told us years ago this is impossible. What we say is in there might be very different from what is actually in there.

Definitions and postulates must be followed carefully – even memorized to prevent endless turnbacks – if one is to follow the authors’ proposition. Commitment is not loyalty, the latter being merely what people do. Commitment is about what people feel. And it is important because the authors believe that “the main reason for the majority of new products failing is that the commitment of consumers to the products they are already using is not taken into account” (p. 11). Their first job is to teach us the four dimensions of commitment: satisfaction with the current brand, perception of the alternatives, how important the choice of any brand is in this category, and the degree of ambivalence the consumer holds about brands in the category. The authors postulate four degrees of commitment by users: entrenched, average, shallow, and convertible. There are also four degrees of availability of non‐users, graded in the opposite direction: available, ambivalent, weakly unavailable (to your brand), and strongly unavailable (pp. 25‐6).

In searching for ways to convert non‐users to users, the marketer should identify those most likely to leave the brand plus those most expected to be acquired by the brand (the so‐called “fluid center,” or in the authors’ parlance, the “fluid centre”!). One attacks when those non‐users open to the brand significantly outnumber those users who are uncommitted; conversely, one employs a consolidation strategy when there are more uncommitted consumers than committed. The latter portion of the book is filled with practical applications of the information a marketer can gain by measuring the eight commitment‐noncommitment categories for his or her brand, although the overall principles are briefly outlined in chapter two’s section entitled “How do we manage the segments?”

All good stuff if you can measure all these degrees of commitment and non‐commitment accurately. The authors make it sound simple in their chapter three subtitle “How to measure commitment with just a few questions.” To spare you the suspense, here are those “few questions,” four in number to be precise:

1. 1.

   (1) How happy are you with (whatever it is)?

2. 2.

   (2) Does your decision of brand choice matter to you – do you care?

3. 3.

   (3) How committed are you to this brand, or conversely, are there any acceptable alternatives on your radar scope?

4. 4.

   (4) If there are acceptable alternatives on the scene, how different are they from each other?

So, perfectly committed consumers are happy with your brand, choice of brand (“the relationship”) is something they care about, and there must be nothing else that appeals to them – a rare situation, indeed. So how is one to deal with the uncommitted (presumably the majority of your market)? If they are uncommitted because they do not care which brand they use, you have to give them something to care about in your brand, or at a minimum manage them through superior distribution or point‐of‐sale activity. If they are dissatisfied, remove the cause of the dissatisfaction. If they are attracted to other products, the marketer can either improve your brand’s performance on the dimensions which attract people to your competitors, or identify and flaunt your own brand’s competitive advantages. Alternatively, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em – turn your brand into a “look‐alike.”

The remainder of the book is devoted to chapters on the importance of commitment measurement to savvy marketers; data from 2,800 worldwide studies by the authors and others confirming the impact of commitment; some case studies as illustrations; a fascinating chapter on their work with the African National Congress in applying the commitment‐led approach to political marketing, and how‐tos and practical tips on the application of their theory to your own marketing life.

I must admit, as an amateur psychologist and almost‐degreed counseling student, I found this material fascinating. Not the least of my pleasure in reading it was the return to the King’s English (and spelling), which took me back 16 years to my servitude with Cadbury Schweppes.

Now … if only we could actually measure this thing called “commitment” so we could actually use this theory …