Brand Intimacy: Creating Emotional Connections with Customers
Creating emotional connections with customers looking to buy your products can make all the difference. Emotions are the driving force that influence most buying decisions. Stirring strong emotions, whether positive or negative - can help you create a bond between your customers and your business. This is an important objective for almost all businesses. Positive emotions are crucial to a brilliant retail customer experience, as a loyal customer is the one that is most likely to recommend your company than a one-time customer. What is Brand Intimacy? Brand intimacy is defined as the deep emotional connection between a business and its customers. The brand intimacy marketing model involves a focus on emotions and can affect how customers make purchase decisions and whether they become loyal fans of the brand. Brand intimacy is different from brand loyalty. While brand loyalty may depend on loyalty incentives and rewards, brand intimacy is entirely dependent on how a customer ‘feels’ about a brand. Brand intimacy engenders reciprocal bonds that are deepened by emotional connections. The connection is created when a customer has engaged with and repeatedly tried the brand’s offerings. The Brand Intimacy Model The degree of overall positive emotions a customer experiences toward a brand and the extent to which he relates the brand with its brand attributes determines the strength of the emotional connection. Some of the signs of this intimacy are fulfilment, identity, nostalgia, indulgence, ritual and enhancement. The Brand Intimacy Model consists of a number of stages that reveal the degree of brand intimacy with customers. Sharing is the first stage where users and brands engage and interact with each other. The next stage is bonding, in which acceptance and trust are established when an attachment is created leading to the relationship between the customer