Anthropomorphic automobiles and product loyalty versus brand loyalty.
I was having a conversation with someone recently about brand loyalty in the automotive industry and today I came across an article from the Journal of Consumer Psychology (read the abstract here).
The authors examine the effects of assigning anthropomorphic qualities to objects. Not surprisingly, when consumers start assigning personality traits to their cars, they become less likely to replace them.
They argue that this could prove problematic to brands when consumers assign the intangible value to the specific product and not to the brand. For example, a consumer names his VW Jetta “Cindy.” In his mind, the car is no longer a VW or a Jetta. It has a new brand that he has created. “Cindy” is the recipient of all intangible value he assigns to the car and his experiences with it. This makes him less likely to part with it, because it’s not as easy to find a new “Cindy” as it is to find a new VW Jetta.
While it’s a silly example of an extraordinarity bias, it’s not unrealistic. So the challenge for automotive brands becomes finding ways to capture the intangible value that the consumer is assigning to the artificial personality he created for the car.
Toyota is making an interesting attempt at exactly this. Their “Glass of Water” app allows them to associate themselves with the efficient driving experiences of consumers, regardless of consumers’ car brands. They’ve created a platform that intervenes and redirects some of that intangible value and brand loyalty toward Toyota (the brand), not to any specific product.
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