The 1st Baron Kelvin who (unless you were a physics major, and I don’t count many of those among our band of marketers, researchers, and brand folk, or British) isn’t likely to be someone who immediately springs to mind when it comes to research, particularly market research.
Lord Kelvin did research. A lot of it, as it turns out. He formulated the first and second laws of thermodynamics and unified physics as an emerging science. Absolute temperature units are named after him. You don’t get much more researchy than that. But not so much a marketing research guy.
But having said that, I can tell you he wrote one of the most meaningful summaries about the research contribution of human measurement. And I’m not winding you up (That’s British for “I’m being dead serious”). Lord Kelvin said, “When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you’ll know it and be able to speak of it.”
And I say, “Hear, hear!” (British for “I couldn’t agree with him more”).
Especially today, you need to precisely measure what you’re going to be speaking about and be able to express it in numbers that are indisputable. If you can do that, you will know everything about it and will be able to speak of it. More importantly, you’ll be able to do something about it. Lord Kelvin’s insight resonated with me because Brand Keys just released our annual Customer Loyalty Engagement Index (this year 81,348 consumers assessed 1,100 brands in 104 categories), and so I feel empowered to speak of it. And loyalty.
Loyalty is based on an Ideal. Well, the consumer’s Ideal, not the marketer’s. Marketers tend to look at categories through a brand-lens, consumers through a category-lens. That dichotomy creates problems. What drives loyalty is category-specific because consumers don’t buy cars the same way they buy a computers or colas. And, while different categories are driven by different values, all the categories and brands have one thing in common. Expectations. The expectations consumers hold for those category-specific loyalty drivers.
We measure real expectations because they are the most accurate and predictive loyalty indicators anywhere. They’re the “super glue” of loyalty, which is something Lord Kelvin would have said if they had super glue back in 1866 (when he was knighted). But I’m confident he would have felt exceeding expectations would create an unbreakable bond with customers, as indeed it does. And as a lot of independent validation studies from organizations like The Advertising Research Foundation, the Association of National Advertisers, and the 4A’s, the American Association of Advertising Agencies have proven.
Your brand can super glue consumers to your brand by exceeding expectations. But only if you know what those expectations are. That’s a big “if.” Brands are generally pretty bad when it comes to measuring expectations and here’s why. Meeting expectations better than your competition translates loyalty into positive consumer behavior, behavior into sales, sales into profits and all that into category and market dominance. It supercharges marketing and advertising efforts, boosts awareness, or energizes engagement and CX. And it’s a model that can be applied to any sector or category.
But expectations are a tricky business. Generally the ratio of emotional to rational values driving expectations is 80:20. Quibble all you want about the ratio in your category, but unless you’re selling commodities, rational factors aren’t going to be the preponderance of what moves audiences or products. Which is why you can’t just ask about loyalty or consumer expectations or locate them on a 5-star rating scale. Not if, as Lord Kelvin advised, you want to know about them unequivocally and be able to speak of it incontrovertibly.
That being an immutable fact-of-brand-life, we developed a methodology combining psychological inquiry – to get to the important (and difficult-for-consumers-to-articulate) emotional values – and higher order statistical analyses, to measure consumer expectations and calculate category driver percent-contributions. So real strategic planning can take place. Because today’s consumer does not behave as he/she says, does not say what he/she really thinks, and does not think what he/she really feels.
Our methodology identifies a category’s path-to-purchase drivers (there are 4), describing how consumers view their Category Ideal, compare brands in the category versus that ideal, and how they’ll engage, buy, and remain loyal to the brand. Each driver is made up of emotional and rational values and has been proven to be the best roadmap to successful strategies, tactics, features, CX, and advertising that will best engage consumers and reinforce loyalty.
Our methodology has a test/re-test reliability of 0.93 with results generalizable at the 95% confidence level that correlates very highly (0.87+) with consumer behavior, engagement, brand awareness, sales, and, axiomatically, brand profitability. It accurately measures brands’ abilities to meet or exceed expectations consumers hold for their Category Ideal. If you have numbers like that you can absolutely speak about those critical marketing and branding issues with absolute authority.
This year, to illustrate loyalty nuances, we introduced gold, silver, and bronze levels to specify brand loyalty hierarchies in the categories and companies consumers evaluated.
You can find a complete list of the 2025 Brand Loyalty Award winners here.
And yes, the loyalty paradigm has changed dramatically over the past decade. But happily, consumer loyalty can be measured, achieved, leveraged and spoken of.
I’m pretty confident the 1st Baron Kelvin would say, “Here, here!”
Photo by Ilse Orsel on Unsplash
