In brands we trust

The haloed Apple logo

Why do consumers trust brands?

If you’re after a perfectly rational explanation, you’d say: because brands deliver on their promise. Tide washes whiter, Disney is fun, Apple is cool, and BMW is the ultimate driving experience.

In other words, we believe something like this happens: 

• The consumer listens to or watches the ad, and is intrigued by the promise made by the brand;
• The consumer tests the promise by buying or test-driving the product;
• The consumer is convinced by the evidence they see and experience in the test – the proof of the pudding is in the eating;
  
• They purchase or repurchase the brand, and brand trust is cemented.

But there is a fly in this soothing balm of an explanation: the proof, it turns out, is often not in the eating.

For many (most?) product categories, consumers have no way of testing the promise made in the advertisement. 

First, the promises themselves are vague: how do you test if Apple is cool?

And secondly, even if the consumer simply wanted to test product quality or performance, they'd have a tough time. 

Consumers lack the expertise to determine which digital camera is superior, they lack the means to test which car is best, they lack the time to determine which washing machine is most durable, and they lack the patience to find out which wall paint dries fastest.

But wait. We live in a networked world. Surely, consumers get their information from expert reviews, they bone up on independent product tests such as those conducted by Consumer Reports, they call up peer reviews such as those on Amazon.com, and they can get data from sources such as J.D. Power’s automobile quality ratings.

There is certainly plenty of information out there.

But how well do consumers use this information?

Consumer Reports' tests of cars, for example, put dozens of makes of automobile through dozens of stringent tests (check out the video).

The results tend to show that Honda and Subaru consistently outperform BMW and Mercedes on most of these tests. And the German brands are consistently in the bottom half of cars tested in terms of reliability. 

2011 Consumer Reports Test Results. Source: Consumerreports.org

Yet consumers tend to be more willing to pay price premiums for the German brands over the Japanese ones. (Yes, the German brands may be more fun to drive, but that's probably because of this).

So when it comes to buying, do consumers ignore the data; do they put their faith in the brand?

Faith trumps empirical evidence? Where else have we heard this recently?

Yes, exactly. Think back to last month when the empirical evidence of an intact world on May 22nd did not shake Harold Camping's belief that the end of the world was nigh. Nor did the death of the "living god" Sai Baba convince his millions of followers around the world that he was a mere mortal, or even of his demise.

It turns out, the parallels between brands and cults have been researched, as have the parallels between religious faith and faith in brands. Recent papers have found, for example, that:

• the Macintosh community behaves a lot like a cult: it is a strong network of adherents, with faith in a savior (Steve Jobs), and opposition to a common perceived evil (the PC);

• those who are fervently religious tend to be more brand loyal;

• brands are used by consumers to express their identity and self, just as religion is a mark of who they are. In this sense, the authors of the study suggest, religion and brands are substitutes – brands serve a self-expressive function for the non-religious.

There are also claims by Lindstrom that religion and brands excite the same parts of the brain.

If consumers put faith in brands, what does that make marketers? 

Let's just say, evangelists.

Spread the word. 

But before you go, check out this mash-up from The Netherlands:

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See also Brand mimicry

Source page for Consumer Reports graph of auto test results 2011