BofA and Dunkin Donuts among loyalty award winners
??Bank of America and Dunkin’ Donuts are among the category winners in the 2009 Brand Keys Customer Engagement Loyalty awards.
Research consultancy Brand Keys named coffee and baked goods retaurant chain Dunkin’ Donuts as the leading brand in the Coffee category for consistently meeting or exceeding customer expectations – the third year in a row it had wone the award- while BofA headed the bank category.
Robert Passikoff, founder of Brand Keys, commented: “Today, value matters more than ever to consumers, and in terms of service and quality and variety, Dunkin’ has been able to meet consumers’ very high expectations in a tough marketplace.”
Dunkin’ Donuts’ has recently run the “You Kin’ Do It” advertising and marketing campaign, for which the company has implemented several programs to make life “a little brighter and more affordable for consumers”. This included helping Arizona football fans get over their championship loss, Dunkin’ Donuts offered a free donut to customers in all of the company’s Phoenix-area stores. Tampa Bay customers were treated to a free cup of coffee every Wednesday in February.
Brand Keys says its latest survey findings indicate that shopper-consciousness has shifted from one of personal responsibility to ferret out value, to a brand’s responsibility to provide it – plainly, publicly and proactively.
The 2009 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index (CLEI) predicts a consumer shift away from price and toward value, in the form of real brand differentiation.
A few of the 69 brands that received the highest loyalty and engagement assessments from this year’s 26,000 loyalty constituents were: Avis, JetBlue, Bank of America, Zyrtec, Sam Adams, Cheerios, Allstate, J. Crew, Olive Garden, Dunkin’ Donuts, Mary Kay, Kohl’s, Discover, Kodak, W Hotels, Scottrade, Iams, McDonald’s, Grey Goose, ABC TV, Nike, Apple, Samsung, Wal-Mart, the NFL and Tom’s of Maine. The complete listing of the 62 category rankings can be found at www.brandkeys.com/awards
Brand Keys said the brands that won are the beneficiaries of consumers’ new expectations regarding brand value. The most significant shift is a neutralizing of the impact of price.
The analyst said this is not necessarily bad news. Despite the econoic crisis Brand kets says these shifts provide opportunities for brands that “pay attention to what the consumer really expects and offer meaningful differentiation, will tip the value scales in their direction, because value matters more than ever. More than just price. The current Brand Keys Index rates customers’ relationships with 444 brands in 63 categories.