Why emotions drive customer loyalty even when customers think they're being rational 

Customer loyalty is the willingness of customers to consistently choose a brand over another and recommend it to others.

Ask a customer (including myself, haha 😂) why they chose a brand, and you’ll hear things like:

• “The price was great.”

• “The features matched what I needed.”

• “I just liked how easy it was.”

Sounds logical, right? But dig a little deeper, and you’ll often find the real answer isn’t logical but emotional. If customers look deeper in themselves, their answer will take a different look. You'd have responses like:

• Great price: I felt financially responsible and smart to buy it for $80 instead of $130. 

• Features: I felt empowered, like this brand really understands me. It makes me feel competent.

• Ease of use: the brand values my time and makes me feel in control so I feel safer choosing them.

So what role do emotions play driving customer loyalty compared to the rational aspects of the customer experience?

This was the central question in a large-scale study led by customer experience expert Zhecho Dobrev. His team surveyed over 18,000 customers across 24 well-known companies and 59 different customer groups.

They wanted to compare emotions to other aspects of a B2C and B2B touchpoint to determine which is more influential in inspiring customer behavior and driving business value or loyalty. 

Which is more important? Is it:

• Emotional attachment (i.e., customers feel a bond or relationship with the company, or feel heard, appreciated, etc.)?

• Product excellence?

• The company's branding and type of adverts they publish? 

• Customer service? 

• Communication (relevant emails or notifications)? 

• Ease of making payment?

• Ease of learning about the product/service before purchase?

• Ease of contract renewal and the company's retention activities? 

• Ease of using the product or service?

• Web and self-service (web account management, app experience, or digital self-service)?

Dobrev's research revealed that individuals don't always know what truly matters to them in a product or experience. When asked to rate an extensive list of features or services, customers frequently indicated that everything is important.

So instead, the research team used a method (called a conjoint exercise) that forces customers to make trade-offs and choose what matters most and least in different scenarios. This helped in finding out what's really important to customers.

Following this, they used predictive analytics (structural equation modeling) to identify the key drivers of loyalty. The model mapped customer responses across three key areas:

• The stimuli (what an organization does)

• The response (how customers feel emotionally)

• The effect (how customers behave i.e., stayed, left, or recommended the brand)

But if emotions matter so much, why don’t customers say that?

Well, it's largely because people don’t always know what’s really influencing them. Even in situations where we know we're being emotional, we wouldn't want to agree. I mean, who wants to be seen as an emotional person? 

We’re taught to think and behave rationally, so even when our decisions are driven by emotions, we find it so easy to come up with a logical explanation to back up the decision. When we can't find a logical explanation, then we say things like, “I just had this gut feeling…”, “I trusted my instincts…”, “I have this strong conviction to do it…”

A famous study on wine purchases proves this perfectly.

In a supermarket, researchers played either French or German music while displaying both wines. When French music played, French wine sales rose. When German music played, German wines sold more.

But when customers were asked why they made their choice, only 1 out of 44 mentioned the music. 86% discredited the impact of the music.

But the music did influence their buying decision. They just didn’t realize it.

So why are emotions so important in inspiring customer loyalty?

Why are emotions so important in deciding whether to stick with or recommend a brand?

A straight-up answer is because we humans don’t choose between our experiences. We choose between memories of our experiences.

That’s what we found from studying the work of psychologist Daniel Kahneman.

One key reason emotions matter so much is because they are deeply tied to how customers memorize and remember their experiences with an organization. So when it is time to decide who to buy from, the memories they recall become what they base their decision on.

As I mentioned in the previous article, Kahneman calculated that the psychological present lasts about three seconds. That adds up to 600 million moments in a lifetime, and roughly 600,000 in a month. Yet the majority of them are not even remembered. 

As business leaders, we must remember this and realize that the more emotionally impactful a moment is, good or bad, the more deeply it etches itself into a customer's memory.

As Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Wrapping  up

Although customers (including you and I 😉) think we're being rational, the truth is that our decisions and actions are inspired by our emotions. It's very easy for us to say we are rational because that's what we're taught to believe.

There are lots of teachings and motivational materials that encourage us to ignore our feelings and use our brain. We've for long believed that emotions are dangerous and will only ruin our lives if we allow ourselves to act based on how we feel.

But our emotions are integral to how we are wired. Even when we have two options, one labeled as emotional and the other labeled as logical, choosing the logical option would still be from an emotional point.

For example, imagine it's late in the evening, you're very tired - mentally and physically - but you have an impromptu presentation to make the next day and need to prepare a slide for it.

Based on how we're taught, sleeping would be the emotional action to take and prepping for your presentation would be the logical option, right?

But if we take a deeper look at it, any option you choose would be emotional regardless.

If you choose to sleep, you'll be responding to your need for rest and physical restoration. Emotions being expressed or longed for are the feelings of relief, calmness, and safety. You're simply seeking self-care, mental, and physical well-being. The fear of missing important details or making mistakes may be one of the emotions here too. I mean, who wouldn't be scared of presenting wrong data and then looking incompetent in front of the people who have come to listen to the presentation? 

If you decide to work on the slide regardless of your exhausted state, you'll be responding to emotions like pride, (the pride of doing something when it seems impossible) hope, and fear (the fear of missing out on an opportunity). You'll probably make this decision because you want your hard work to count and knowing that this is a chance to move forward and be seen, you're likely afraid that if you stop now you might lose something that deeply matters to you.

You see that even what we ordinarily consider a logical decision is inspired by emotions? 

We humans are emotional beings but we don't realize it fully because we've been taught to be rational and socialized to dislike being seen as emotional. This is largely why customers rarely mention emotional connection as a driver for their decisions. It's also why we all find it easy to come up with rational explanations to justify our actions which are actually driven by emotions.

This has made me and the rest of the Potior Satori team ask a very necessary question. What exactly is emotion? Is it more than a feeling? Is it an interpretation of what we experience or it's a signal? What exactly is emotion?

Our next research project will be starting soon and these are some of the critical biiig questions we are seeking answers to.

Let’s make it practical

At Potior Satori, we don’t just conduct research, we develop growth strategies from the findings. And our favorite part? It's walking side by side with impact-driven organizations to implement the strategies.

If you’d love to know how to weave emotional connection into your daily operations so your customers feel it without you overthinking it, send me a DM or schedule a Loyalty Chat.

We’d love to walk the journey with you.