AbdulSalamThere are five types of customers according to the corporate world. The corporate world uses consumer psychology to study its consumers and Consumer psychology is all about using techniques to ensure customer retention for the company so that customers keep buying things from the same company. But as people are different in their understanding, purchasing power, behavior and preferences, consumer psychology divides customers into different categories. This categorization helped me understand my purchase patterns with respect to some brands and companies. Here are my learnings and insights for you, which you can use in your professional and personal life to understand your relationship with companies.
Criteria:
Let me first define the criteria for dividing customers into different types. It is “Customer Satisfaction”. Customer Satisfaction, when combined with the behaviors of the customers, provides us the with the categorization of five types of customers.
1-Loyalists:
Loyalists is the highest degree of customers who stay loyal to the same company throughout their lives. Most loyal customers are found engaged with the APPLE in Mobile phones and GOOGLE when it comes to apps and services. Loyalists try to buy every product of the same brand to create an ecosystem of facilities provided.
2-Apostles:
Apostles lies below loyalists in customer satisfaction. They feel very extraordinary satisfaction with the company and always spread positive word of mouth for the company and the products. They may not remain loyal to the company throughout their lives due to multiple reasons, but they always admire and buy from brands that satisfy them beyond their expectations.
3-Defectors:
This type of customer aren’t very loyal to the company. For them, everything is okay, and they feel merely satisfied or neutral about the things that they are using. Defectors are more likely to stop doing business with the company.
4-Terrorists:
Here come the bad boys. These customers have a negative experience with the company and they always spread negative about the company resulting in a negative repute of the company. Do you think they are the worst type of customers? I don’t think so, time to introduce you to mercenaries.
5-Mercenaries:
They always look for the lowest price. They don’t care about the brand or company. Most of the mercenaries labeled customers belong to the poor or lower middle class with very limited purchasing power. That’s why they do have very little or no brand loyalty. That’s why corporate label them as “Mercenaries”.
Final notes: Customer types are pretty much similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. They uplift themselves from worst to best. Most of people fall in these categories depending on their financial situation and brand perception. Let me know which company are you loyal to and how long have you been loyal to them.
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Do we even need to target “Mercenaries”
Yes. They are Important too but unfortunatly we have lower retention in mercenries. But they are good buyer of cheap products.