Customer satisfaction and loyalty can be achieved by either
emphasizing the product or the brand depending on the level
of development of the product or product line in the markets.
At the introduction stage of the product, emphasis is on the
product and the tangible aspects of it. Satisfaction can be
achieved at this stage if there is a fit between the customer
need and the product offering. The intensity of satisfaction
attained at this stage, however, is not high mainly because of
the absence or scarcity of the psychological benefits included
in the product offering. At a more mature stage of the
product, there are given opportunities for the brand to excel if
it is able to add enough intangible benefits to the product.
When successful, this new bundle of tangible and intangible
benefits can produce higher customer satisfaction, which in
turn can generate higher customer loyalty in the long term.
Yet, a more mature stage can combine a product-brand
where both tangible and intangible benefits are salient without
any set (tangible or intangible) prevailing over the other.
Alternatively, this stage can privilege the brand emphasizing
the intangible benefits. The consequences of either approach
(product-brand or brand alone) on customer satisfaction,
however, are distinctive: the brand alone is able to produce a
stronger satisfaction-loyalty relationship than the productbrand
combination. Nevertheless and despite the benefits of
achieving the stage of a brand alone, it seems that both
customer and manufacturer/provider have to pull up the
brand. The manufacturer/provider cannot reach the highest
stage without the customer’s help. The customer would finally
accept the brand alone as the subject of his satisfaction and
follow-up loyalty.
The above fitting process between product or brand
adoption and customer satisfaction-loyalty is more intense in
the world of innovative products, such as electronic products,
as compared to traditional products, such as wine. Innovative
product processes, such as the ones involved in electronic
products, accelerate the interaction between adoption and
relationships. The intensity in technological developments is
usually matched by customers’ higher participation in such
processes. By contrast, traditional products do not require
either technological innovations or active customer
participation or both in the usually slow-paced development
of the product. As a consequence, traditional products do not
reach high levels of satisfaction-loyalty, at least not as high as
the ones achieved in innovative-product processes.