How Customers Perceive Brands

Customers Don’t Remember Good Experiences! A good customer experience is no longer enough. That may sound strange in a business that talks endlessly about service, but the reality is that good has become expected. Most serious brands today can deliver a clean store, a polite welcome, and a smooth transaction. The problem is that none of that is memorable on its own. What customers remember are the moments that feel personal. I still remember a client from years ago who returned after a long gap, not because of a promotion or a product launch, but because he remembered how a member of the team had made him feel during a simple visit. There was no dramatic gesture and nothing designed to impress. He just felt seen, understood, and respected. That stayed with him far longer than the product itself. This is where many brands confuse consistency with loyalty. Consistency matters because it protects standards, but standards alone do not create emotional memory. If every visit feels correct but forgettable, then the brand becomes interchangeable. The client may be satisfied, but satisfaction is not the same thing as attachment. Real loyalty begins when something remains after the visit is over. It is not built only through service quality. It is built through memory, and memory usually comes from a moment that felt human rather than managed. #CustomerExperience #CustomerLoyalty #LuxuryRetail #RetailLeadership #BrandExperience #ClientEngagement #RetailInsights

Brands that prioritize what's right for the customer before what's right for the company tend to differentiate the #customerexperience considerably and build rabidly loyal customers who become advocates for the brand. Brands that lead with what's right for the company but consider what's right for customers remain competitive but often struggle to differentiate their #CX or lift their customer perception and satisfaction scores vis-a-vis the competition. And brands that only consider what's right for the company and ignore their customers are the ones we write about (today or in the future) in the past tense. There is no path to success that doesn't go through the customer. The more customer-centric we can make our decisions, the better our customer relationships, the lower our churn, and the greater our reputation.

MIT researchers spiked beer with vinegar and gave it to 400 people. Some they told and some they didn’t. The results show why your pre-purchase messaging and expectation setting is equally (if not more) important than your product. Leonard Lee, Shane Frederick and Dan Ariely served pub patrons two beers at MIT. One was regular beer. The other was “MIT Brew” (same beer + a few drops of balsamic vinegar). They split people into 3 groups: 1️⃣ Group 1: Tasted blind (never told about vinegar). 2️⃣ Group 2: Told about vinegar before tasting. 3️⃣ Group 3: Told about vinegar after tasting. Here’s what happened: Group 1 (blind): Actually preferred MIT Brew over regular beer. Group 2 (told before): Disliked MIT Brew significantly. Group 3 (told after): Still preferred MIT Brew same as blind group. Only the people who knew about the vinegar beforehand had their experience ruined. They found that the timing of information had a major impact. This proves something important about customer experiences. Expectations don’t just change how people rate products. They change how products actually taste and feel (essentially hacking the brain). When you expect something to be bad, your brain makes it worse. When you have no negative expectation, you judge based on the actual experience. This explains why Coke tastes better with the label when people know it’s Coke inside the can. Most marketers miss this opportunity. The study shows expectations create real changes in how customers experience your product. This is why premium pricing often works and why people get excited when they finally get the call to buy a Rolex or a Birkin bag. Higher price sets expectation of higher quality, which makes the product perform better in customers’ minds. Remember, you’re not simply selling a product... You’re selling an experience. Here’s some ways you can apply this to your marketing: ✅ Build positive expectations before customers try your product. ✅ Use testimonials and social proof early in your funnel. ✅ Avoid leading with price objections/discounts or complexity. ✅ Position your brand to enhance product perception. Your marketing messaging shapes customer experience just as much as your actual product does.

An interesting debate in today’s Brand Equity section of The Economic Times raises a familiar question: Is brand building the CEO’s job — or the CMO’s? Having spent a large part of my career building brands like Louis Philippe, Allen Solly and Peter England — and later creating the luxury retail concept The Collective — I find myself viewing the question somewhat differently. Because today, brands are no longer built primarily through advertising or campaigns. They are built through the cumulative experience customers have with the organisation. That experience is shaped by many things — the product itself, the store environment, the digital interface, pricing credibility, delivery reliability and how the organisation responds when something goes wrong. Increasingly, it is also influenced by the conversations that unfold around the brand on social media, where creators, reviewers and peer communities often shape perceptions long before a customer actually engages with the brand. In that sense, the brand today is no longer merely a marketing construct. It is the outcome of how the organisation consistently behaves. Which is why the traditional debate of CEO vs CMO ownership may miss something fundamental. The CMO can shape the story of the brand. But the CEO shapes the organisation that must live that story every single day. And today’s customers are remarkably quick to detect the gap between the two. Consumers don’t simply buy brands anymore. They continuously evaluate them — often in public. The strongest brands therefore emerge when the brand promise is institutionalised across the organisation — not just articulated through marketing. Because ultimately, brands are not built by campaigns. They are built by consistent experience and behaviour over time. #BrandBuilding #ConsumerBehaviour #CustomerExperience #RetailLeadership #The Economic Times

In 1975, Pepsi launched a bold marketing initiative that would change the game. They held the Pepsi Challenge in malls, fairs, and grocery stores across America, featuring two unmarked cups for consumers to taste. To everyone's surprise, more people chose Pepsi over Coca-Cola. This event became one of the most successful marketing campaigns of the 20th century. However, a crucial detail often overlooked is that when branding was removed, Pepsi won. Once the iconic bottle was introduced, Coca-Cola regained dominance. Why did this happen? The answer lies in brand psychology. Coca-Cola's bottle shape, colors, history, and emotional associations created a stronger narrative than the flavor itself. The lesson here is profound: it's not just about taste; it's about the story behind the brand. This concept, known as The Missing Bottle Principle, highlights that when consumers are unaware of the brand, they rely on their senses. Once they know the brand, their judgment is influenced by their beliefs. Consider this: - Apple can launch phones with fewer features and still succeed. - Nike outsells cheaper alternatives. - Starbucks charges premium prices for coffee. - Louis Vuitton thrives on perception. - Mercedes sells identity rather than just engines. - Coca-Cola can lose taste tests yet remain a market leader. Your brand shapes how your product is perceived before it is even tried. The takeaway is clear: strong branding leads to loyalty, while weak branding invites logical judgment. People are emotional buyers, influenced by familiarity, nostalgia, identity, memories, expectations, social cues, and cultural symbolism. Ultimately, your product doesn’t need to win the taste test; it needs to win the story test. The story is what resonates, what is shared, and what drives purchases. Just ask Coca-Cola and the Pepsi Challenge that inadvertently demonstrated this truth. #PaulGetter #BrandStrategy

Consumers today enjoy discovering brands more than being advertised to. This is something I’ve noticed repeatedly while building Ajmal Perfumes over the years. Earlier, marketing was largely about pushing a message out as widely as possible. The assumption was that if enough people saw the ad, a percentage of them would eventually buy the product. But the internet has changed how people interact with brands. Today, consumers feel a very different kind of satisfaction when they discover something on their own. It could be a skincare brand they found through a creator they trust, a small food brand someone recommended in a comment section, or even a niche product that suddenly shows up organically on their feed. The experience feels less like advertising and more like finding something valuable before everyone else does. In fact, many of the most interesting brands today have grown not because they advertised the loudest, but because people enjoyed sharing them. Think about how many brands you’ve personally discovered through creators, communities, or even random conversations online. The moment you find something early, it almost feels like you’re part of the journey, not just a customer. That’s a very different relationship compared to seeing the same ad repeatedly on every platform. The brands that understand this tend to grow in a much more organic way. Because when people discover a brand themselves, they don’t just buy it. They talk about it.

Brand isn’t your logo, your colors, or your tagline. Brand is the meaning people attach to you, consciously or unconsciously, based on every interaction they have with your organization. It’s the sum of what people feel, what they expect, and what they trust you to deliver. It’s shaped by your identity, reinforced by your behavior, and confirmed through their experience. When those three align: identity, behavior, and perception, brand becomes more than marketing. It becomes culture. It becomes clarity. It becomes a promise people believe in. Brand isn’t what you say you are. Brand is what people experience you to be.

“Brand becomes a growth lever when you measure what comes to customers’ minds—not just what you ask them to rate.”   New research we led at CVS Health—now published in Harvard Business Review—shows that the words, feelings, and experiences customers spontaneously associate with a brand are powerful predictors of how their spending will change over time. Working with my colleague Erin Condon, and Marco Vriens and Rogier Verhulst, and Felix Eggers from the Copenhagen Business School, our team found that unprompted brand associations outperform traditional brand metrics in predicting future customer value. Even more striking: not all perceptions matter equally—some associations are several times more economically impactful than others. Listening to customers’ natural language isn’t just qualitative color—it’s actionable intelligence that can help prioritize where experience investments will deliver real growth.   Grateful to our academic collaborators for the rigor behind this work, and to Harvard Business Review for publishing it.   📘 Read the article linked in the comments below:   #TeamCVS #CustomerExperience #BrandStrategy #CustomerValue #CX

Buyers Don’t Experience Your Brand the Way You Think. Most leadership teams believe their brand is strong because customers seem happy and deals eventually close. But satisfaction is not clarity. Buyers can like the experience and still hesitate to commit. The real decision isn't "Did this feel good?" It's "Do I clearly understand what this company stands for and why I should trust them over others?" That understanding lives at the intersection of Brand Experience and Customer Experience. When one is strong and the other is weak, growth may appear healthy on the surface but ultimately stalls in conversion. Pipeline builds. Demos go well. Then deals sit. That’s why improving CX alone doesn’t unlock revenue. And branding without lived experience doesn’t stick. The fastest-growing companies don’t guess perception. They design it by aligning what they say, what they build, and what customers actually experience at every point of contact. Because the brand perception gap is not a branding problem. It’s a revenue problem. #BrandExperience #Marketing #Sales #CustomerExperience

I've reviewed hundreds of brand strategies. The same mistake keeps showing up. Every brand workshop starts the same way. Leadership teams debate tone of voice, visual identity, purpose statements. Nobody asks: what do our customers actually say about us when we're not in the room? That gap between how you think you show up and how people actually experience you is your real brand problem. Brand is a memory structure. You're not building awareness. You're building meaningful recall in specific experience and moments of need. The best brands don't just look good. They mean something specific. They occupy a precise space in the mind of the right person at exactly the right time. Most brand work polishes the surface. Real brand strategy digs into the space between expectation and experience. It leverages frequency and relevance. That's where the differentiation lives. What do people say about your brand when you're not listening? #BrandStrategy #Marketing #Consulting #StrategicThinking #TARGAN