Brand loyalty is when customers continue to prefer the same brand even when other brands offer similar products or services. Customers not only continue to interact with and shop from that brand, but also associate their positive emotions with it.
Brand loyalty has a lot to do with how customers perceive your brand, their actions and values. It is also an important way to help maintain customer loyalty and increase repurchase rates. Again, brand loyalty focuses on customer perception and can also be thought of as emotional loyalty. Customer brand perception can be based on empathy. Empathy is not only about understanding and sympathizing with another. It is also being able to establish a bond with the other. This is based on mirror neurons.
Mirror neurons are neurons that play a critical role in many areas such as social cognition, empathy, language development and motor learning. These neurons form the basis of human interactions and social bonds by helping us understand, imitate and learn from other people’s actions and emotions. Research on mirror neurons has led to important findings in many fields such as neuroscience, psychology and education, and their functioning contributes to a better understanding of human behavior and mental processes. In particular, it lays the foundations for social behavior and cooperation. Understanding the intentions and actions of others helps us build effective interactions in society. The fact that brands appeal to emotions and reach consumers with emotion-oriented efforts can be positively received by the consumer. Mirror neurons are also responsible for imitation and identification.
For example, when brands create content similar to consumers’ lifestyles, this can activate the consumer’s mirror neurons. Positive experiences and memories with the brand create an emotional bond with consumers.
As a result, concepts such as mirror neurons and empathy come to the fore in ensuring consumer loyalty. Understanding the neuroscientific foundations of the consumer will provide many advantages from consumer loyalty to brand success. This can be easily determined with the tools in neuromarketing. Especially emotion analysis can be very useful in this regard.
Reference: Psychologist Merve Altındağ
G.Rizzolatti,I.Craghero: The mirror-neuron system. Annu Rev Neurosci, 27,169-192.
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