Creating Brand Loyalty with Serendipity, Psychology, and a Dash of Dopamine
The modern marketplace has become increasingly crowded. In fact, Nielsen Media reports that there are over 500,000 brands in the world across more than 2,000 product categories. In this fiercely competitive landscape, it’s necessary to rise above the noise and differentiate your brand from the competition. This opens the door to building a connection with customers that resonates with who they are, their values and aspirations.
Forging deep and lasting connections is essential to establishing meaningful relationships, and this is the cornerstone of brand loyalty. To understand why these strategies are effective, it is crucial to understand the role of serendipity in the customer journey. Here, we will explore the effect dopamine has in branding and how neuroscience can be harnessed to capture the hearts, minds, and wallets of your audience. In addition, we will outline actionable strategies and real-world examples so that you can instantly apply these insights and maximize your branding success.
The Psychology of Brand Loyalty
Brand trust is arguably the most valuable, intangible asset of a company. In low trust scenarios, we tend to engage in more System 2 thinking, the mentally tasking mode that is often associated with analytical thinking and tasks such as doing taxes. In contrast, brand trust engages System 1 thinking, associated with fast, automatic, and intuitive thinking.
The brands that are best at building trust earn a spot as the customer’s number-one brand, enacting powerful first-choice brand effects that serve as the cornerstone to brand equity: protection from the competition, supercharging the marketing mix, the flexibility to expand into different products, categories, and/or industries, and ultimately, brand loyalty.
How then, can brand loyalty be cultivated?
Here, branding psychology is crucial. Brand traits and personalities encompass human qualities that endears them to customers. Above all, two traits influence more than 80% of all human social behavior, they are: intentions (warmth) and abilities (competence). At the core of human survival lies our innate desire to understand whether someone or something has the intention to do harm and whether they are capable of it. The same is true of brands. Not only do customers show a preference for brands that are perceived as warm and competent, but research has established that those traits are strong predictors of loyalty metrics.
So, you might wonder how you can apply these findings to improve your brand. First, “good intentions” must be evident at the core of your brand. This is clear in the case of Apple – who just surpassed Amazon to take the top spot in customer loyalty. Apple was able to dominate by demonstrating their competence in designing and delivering high-quality products that enhance the lives of their customers.
Competence is evident in several customer touchpoints at Apple, from the Genius Bar to their annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), where their cutting-edge product announcements reap millions in earned media coverage. Additionally, Apple has excelled in projecting brand warmth by positioning their products as tools that empower personal expression and growth. By humanizing their products (i.e., the famous “I’m A Mac” campaign), Apple has utilized warmth to form emotional connections for deep brand resonance.
How Brand Loyalty can Optimize for Serendipity and Dopamine
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter responsible for feelings of pleasure as part of the brain’s reward system. As one of the four feel-good hormones, it is released in response to pleasurable experiences, and is a powerful tool in designing captivating brand experiences that trigger a strong emotional response among customers. Brands aiming to leverage dopamine should seek to surprise and delight consumers, thereby triggering dopamine and seeking out continuing engagement with the brands products and services.
Brand experiences can be designed to amplify the release of dopamine. This can be achieved through applying serendipity to product experiences. The power of serendipitous experiences shares three core attributes that result in feelings of enchantment and astonishment. For experiences to be serendipitous they must be: enjoyable, unexpected, and inexplicable.
For example, imagine dining out at a restaurant in celebration of a friend’s birthday on a summer evening. Upon leaving the restaurant a group of people with synced boom boxes, flashlights, and a disco ball converge upon your group of friends. "Love Rollercoaster" by Red Hot Chili Peppers is playing, a feel-good song that entices friends and strangers alike to sing and dance in the street. And then poof! Just like that, after the song finished, the group disperses without explanation and a magical moment was made. This is the power of serendipity.
Designing for Serendipitous Brand Experiences
Restaurants that offer off-menu items can also design for serendipitious experiences. This, for example, was recently illustrated in Season 2 of Hulu's The Bear. The scene depicted a couple of modest means who, as teachers, saved their earnings for months to dine at a two-Michelin-star fine-dining restaurant.
After a 10-course meal they were treated to the dinner gratis without explanation. The Michelin-star restaurant, Ever, amplified a good experience to a great experience by the added surprise of picking up the check – but then took the experience one step further by providing the meal gratis without explanation, making it a serendipitous moment.
When designing serendipitous product experiences brand experts should be aware of customer expectations. Serendipity is more powerful when the interaction is unexpected, so look for opportunities for customers to encounter your product where they least expect it. For example, let’s go back to the Michelin-star restaurant, "Ever".
Upon hearing that a customer regretted not having the chance to experience a deep-dish pizza while visiting Chicago, the chef immediately has the kitchen acquire one from a local pizza shop. The chef then creates a custom Michelin-star meal made from the deep dish and presents it to the table. The reaction is priceless. Who would anticipate such a common item on the table of such a sophisticated restaurant? It was an experience that went above and beyond, releasing a rush of dopamine and establishing deep connections between product and brand.
Final Thoughts on The Benefits of Brand Loyalty
Designing customer experiences that leverages the power of dopamine creates an unparalleled interaction that differentiates your brand from competitors, thereby yielding a strategic advantage and bolstering in brand loyalty. Loyal customers are apt to evangelize the brand to others, thereby resulting in the benefits of organic word of mouth. Lastly, loyal customers are apt to increase their recency of consumption, frequency, and monetary spend. All in all, a little brand loyalty goes a long way.
Written by Meagan Andres
Photo by Danila Hamsterman
References for The Psychology of Serendipitious Brand Loyalty
Breslin, S. (2023). 15 Amazon Statistics You Need to Know in 2023
Inc. (n.d.). Brands and Brand Names. Retrieved from Inc.:
Johnson, M., & Misiaszek, T. (2022). Branding that Means Business. London: Profile Books
Marketing Charts. (2022, September 26). 2022’s Top Brands Ranked by Customer Loyalty
Johnson, M. (n.d.). How Marketers Can Unlock Serendipity in Product Experiences. Retrieved from The Neuroscience of: https://www.neuroscienceof.com/branding-blog/serendipity-marketing-product-experience
Schmukler, M. (2021, January 28). The Importance of Developing Trust Through Branding.
The Decision Lab. (2023). System 1 and System 2 Thinking
Watson, S. (2021, July 20). Dopamine: The pathway to pleasure. Retrieved from Harvard Health
