Some of you may have seen the report on Mumbrella about Lasoo's iPhone application. Basically what this application does is collect catalogues together and show you all the products on sale meaning you know where to get the best price. Mumbrella predicted this as a huge change for retail, but I was skeptical.
My first thought was brand loyalty. Clearly we will prefer our retailers, we are happy to pay extra to shop at our favoured retailers. Then I realized that I myself don't even follow this pattern. I will get my favourite retailer to price match, or go elsewhere. Brand loyalty doesn't follow the textbook definition. It's not simply something that allows you to charge a premium and get away with it.
The truth about Brand Loyalty is that it reduces the amount you are willing to spend on searching. Whilst cost is often minimal to shop around, effort is still exerted and high brand loyalty leads us to have a lower limit for the degree with which we will go to research alternatives.
This is where that application hits. The effort exerted is reduced. Whilst some things can be as simple as a web search, even that requires enough effort to not be bothered for every transaction. This however is simply plug in the name and you know what everyone else has it at. Personally I don't know a retailer that I would be loyal enough to, to not actually go to that little effort when it comes to decent sized sales.
The application itself isn't that simple to use, however this vein of program is becoming more and more easy to setup and within time it's likely to be simpler and simpler. With such a high level of brand loyalty required to compete with this ease will brand loyalty become less cared for? Will price become the over arcing core element of success?
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