As an online retail pioneer, Amazon provides fulfillment by simultaneously obsessing narrowly over every pixel of the customer journey to broadly expanding the ecosystem of influence and boundaries of what you can effortlessly buy and have shipped to your door. Amazon is fearless, innovative, and consistently trying to improve their offerings in ways big and small. This experience drives feelings of confidence and trust among Amazon’s customers.
Amazon leads on fulfillment through superior service by being reliable, anticipatory, and most importantly, consistently offering value (savings). By knowing its customers’ profiles and suggesting appropriate items, it gains traction. By delivering flawlessly, it creates an addictive pleasure. By offering a truly unmatched roster of products, it’s convenient, and it exceeds expectations by continually innovating, evolving, and expanding its offerings. Through mastering logistics and the supply chain, Amazon can disintermediate how products arrive in its customers’ hands. Amazon Prime further motivates customers with a new kind of loyalty that provides discounts on delivery (both time and money), as well as offering entertainment options and other savings. It’s working; Amazon Prime customers spend an average of $1,500 a year with Amazon, compared to non-Prime members who spend $625.82
The brand doesn’t talk fulfillment, it embodies it, through every aspect of how Amazon is experienced, enjoyed and delivered. This is an important contribution, as it suggests archetypes should not be considered purely along communication platforms. Rather, they can be thought of as behaviors or pillars of a brand, and experienced through usage.
You can see a chart showing our top-ranked retail brands (in order of ranking) and their archetype scores for fulfillment. Amazon leads the field, and about half the top 10 brands are at or below the industry average for this critical category archetype.
We’ve also discovered those retail brands that score well in fulfillment (the retail category archetype driver) generally have a larger percentage of fusing-stage relationships with their customers. Thus, a strong performance in this archetype clearly links to developing intimate relationships. Amazon has the highest percentage of fusing customers (those in the highest stage of intimacy) among retail brands and ranks fourth out of nearly all 200 brands in our survey for having the largest percentage of fusing customers.
Amazon is winning in brand intimacy by building stronger bonds with its customers, and that bodes well for its future success. Amazon outperforms the category on fulfillment, which has helped drive an impressive 51 percent of its customers to experience some form of intimacy with the brand. By comparison, the category average is 34 percent (see next chart).
Amazon also ranks second in our research as the favorite brand of millennials (18–34-year-olds) and first among those who make $35,000–100,000 per year. The brand dominates the average retailers in frequency of use and has almost double the average price resilience. It also scores highly for customers on the measure “Can’t Live Without.” If that isn’t convincing enough, note that Amazon is trusted more than any other online retailer,83 that it invested nearly $10 billion last year in R&D,84 and that its cloud services division will soon eclipse the operating profit of its retail business,85 and you can quickly see that its dominance is only beginning. Like most large companies ($50 billion in revenues and counting), there is no simple or singular explanation for Amazon’s success. It is rare, however, to see such brand strength from a company that seems to do so little to articulate itself from a marketing and communication perspective. When was the last time you saw an Amazon advertisement?
Amazon continues to defy brand conventions in other ways, too. In general, brands have a more difficult time moving from a value positioning to a luxury or valued one. Compounding this challenge, brands that fulfill utility functions are further susceptible to being marginalized. Once brands are relegated to this base level association, it is extremely difficult for them to rise up in associations with consumers. Cell phone providers, utilities (like power), or even your TV cable company, are examples of the type of brands that typically have low emotional connections with their customers. Often we see a high degree of trapped loyalist customers—those that continue to use the service yet feel trapped or without options to switch. Reflecting on Amazon, though there isn’t any really comparable competition of scale and they deliver utility-like service (online shopping and delivery), they don’t create consumers who feel like trapped loyalists. Even more impressive is that they continue to add a broad array of products and services, ranging from personal electronics, entertainment, and content to enterprise cloud services, all of which are currently meeting with market success. Their brand seems to defy the boundaries of what is traditionally possible or considered a best practice.
By being pervasive, direct, and peerless in fulfilling customer needs, Amazon has established itself as essential to its customers. Its dominance in fulfillment is clearly part of its success. It has become a new brand staple in people’s lives, something upon which they depend. Although it does not appear to promote emotionally oriented brand messaging or advertising, the Amazon brand, indeed, has anchored itself squarely in the hearts of its users, becoming a brand they feel connected to and that they count on.
Brand intimacy and Amazon? Most definitely.
A more “authentic” brand is a very desirable attribute. Wonder why that is? Or why authentic, real experiences resonate strongly with consumers? These attributes are central to the archetype we call identity. The identity archetype is most prevalent in brands that have a strong purpose or belief system. These brands typically strive for a high-order benefit to underpin their essence or reason for being. Often, these brands prioritize their commitment to values over share value. Consider the commitment and powerful identification of brands like Ben & Jerry’s or The Body Shop to social and environmental causes. The Johnson & Johnson credo is another pioneering example of how a company can define itself through holistic business and brand beliefs.
The identity archetype is the most classic of archetypes, in terms of aligning to our traditional understanding of brands standing for something aspirational and compelling. Brands that leverage identity tend to be confident and proud. Clarity in what the company does and does not stand for is key to communicating a focused and authentic message that is ownable within and across industries.
The other component of the identity archetype is aspiration. This can be combined with values that resonate or be demonstrated distinctly (Nike and Rolex are examples of brands we aspire to).
As our lives continue to increase in complexity with a barrage of technology and media messages, we’ve become increasingly dis-intermediated from each other. There is a growing school of thought that, with these chaotic times, belief in brands with a high purpose or values-based essence gives us something to believe in and a relationship to care about. Belief in these types of brands also offers us a way to bond and connect not only with the brand, but with other admirers of the brand over a sense of shared values. (Think of the Bernie Sanders campaign during the 2016 presidential election, where people, particularly millennials, identified clearly with the shared values Mr. Sanders was espousing. This in turn created a “movement” that has been much discussed, providing a shared cause and a clear way to identify one’s self).
Now, for a real world example of identity at work. Does it surprise you to learn that according to our study, one of the top 10 ranking brick-and-mortar retail brands in the United States is Whole Foods? In 36 short years, this grocery store has established itself as the leading supermarket brand for quality, organic food, and lifestyle products. Whole Foods’ commitment to fair trade and labor practices, charity, the environment, and “natural” products of high quality is well established. The brand has ranked one of “100 Best Companies to Work For” by Fortune for 18 consecutive years,86 and its average hourly wage for full-time workers was $19.16 in fiscal year 2014.87
A trip to a Whole Foods gives the visitor an immediate and visceral experie
nce of the importance that the brand places on its core values. By making sure the makeup of the products stays front and center and, where possible, the sourcing of the product itself is visible and highlighted, consumers gain both a clear signal to what the retail brand prioritizes and its affinity toward healthier, more sustainable living. The brand also educates and informs consumers, providing transparency in their supply chain, further building trust. The identity archetype is reflected even in the care and visual delight of the brand’s fresh food displays. Clearly, there is a collective consumer desire to eat healthier and be healthier. Whole Foods mirrors this aspiration and makes us feel better about ourselves.
Purpose-driven brands that leverage the identity attribute are effective because they co-identify with consumers in profound and meaningful ways. We like brands we admire, brands that make us feel good for supporting them and that stand for principles we respect. Whole Foods ranked eighth overall in our study, and among women, the brand jumps to fourth overall. It generally performs well across ages and income levels. The rapid brand growth was also timed well, with consumers’ growing demand for healthier foods and understanding of the effects of the types and ingredients of the foods that we eat.
Whole Foods achieves this level of intimacy because the brand is rooted in a strong purpose. What Jim Stengel would call “the ideal”—a brand that stands for something compelling to their customers.88 He argues that brands rooted in a strong mission statement outperform their competitors and the market indices. This form of brand building is closely linked to the identity archetype.
Whole Foods scored considerably higher on identity compared to the rest of the industry. It also ranked third highest on identity compared to all brands in our study, after Apple and Harley Davidson, two iconic and aspirational brands. Also interesting is the economic equity related to the brand. Although considered a premium-priced store, more of total users said they would be willing to pay 20 percent more for the store’s products versus the category average. When you ask fusing customers of Whole Foods the same question, a whopping 31 percent answer affirmatively.
Interestingly when you compare this brand with Amazon, the online retailer, you see that they are dramatically different brands (almost complete opposites), yet both highly successful in their own ways. Amazon has mastered the online experience and has built an engine of convenience, quality, and reliability. Whole Foods has created a brick-and-mortar ecosystem of health, information, and transparency. Certainly with the acquisition of Whole Foods by Amazon, you see that opposites may well attract. When these two strong intimate brands align, the result may be complementary or a combination of strengths. With two very distinct intimacy profiles, it will be interesting to see how they combine forces and how that impacts the bonds they build with customers.
It is clear regardless of association or ownership that brands that link to identity must either have or establish a strong sense of who they are and find ways to make this both apparent and relevant to consumers. By nature, we find affinity with things we can easily relate to.
In other words, the more your brand identifies with and inspires your customers, the better.
Few would be surprised to learn that Apple’s brand intimacy parallels its dominant business performance. The brand ranked number one in our study, much as it leads in numerous other brand studies, product categories and overall financial returns. Apple’s suite of products and their retail and online stores establish a level of overall excellence few brands can match. The brand is often the benchmark for considering best practices for academics and practitioners alike.
In our study, beyond having the highest overall quotient score (77) and top scores across the fusing stage, and “Can’t Live Without” measure, the brand’s most impressive performance is in achieving an extremely strong showing across five of our six archetypes. Clearly, Apple connects with consumers with several archetypes which, even on their own, can significantly help establish strong bonds; however, in combination, they have a compounding and synergistic effect.
Our focus here is primarily on how Apple leverages its most dominant archetype—enhancement—and how this archetype makes people better, smarter, more capable, and more connected. This is a high-touch archetype that is bold by definition. Even in an advancing industry like technology, Apple’s enhancement score is almost 30 percent higher than the industry average.
Brands that leverage this archetype venture into a more charged territory. Deliver, and gain massive benefits; fail, and you can reach a level of indifference that can be unrecoverable for the brand. Consider the amount of scorn Apple receives whenever it produces a relatively minor or infrequent misstep, or inconveniences their customers—even if these ultimately seem to be for the consumer’s own benefit. Apple has weathered a number of controversies and unhappy customers, including “Antennae Gate,” the controversy over the iPhone 4’s antenna causing dropped calls, which led to Consumer Reports not recommending it, and the more recent removal of the headphone jack on new iPhones in favor of a proprietary lightning connector. Weak and less intimate brands would have a much harder time weathering these sorts of customer sentiment setbacks.
From its earliest days, Apple sought to create desktop computers “for the rest of us.” These first attempts to distance their brand from the likes of IBM, Dell or Hewlett-Packard created a singular focus toward developing the very best consumer computing products on the planet. As computers became increasingly portable and merged with our entertainment and communication devices, Apple defined the leading ecosystem of hardware, software, and services for your digital life(style).
In contrast to its competitors, whose origins were in only one distinct area of computing (Microsoft, operating systems; Google, search engines; Dell/HP, hardware), Apple leveraged the ability to innovate and orchestrate the entire consumer product experience into a more seamless, cohesive software/hardware/user experience as a whole.
The category was dominated by aesthetically banal, engineering-oriented beige boxes before Apple. Apple as a company didn’t just make valuable and smart products; they made beautiful ones. A computer can be elegant. A phone can be stylish. A smartwatch can be fashionable. This appreciation pervades everything about the brand. From their stores and their packaging to their marketing efforts, every decision that interfaces with the user is well considered and crafted to please. The design sensibility and attention to detail on display remains ahead, even while most of the competition has recently mimicked and followed their precedents and practices.
Apple also still looms large with the cult of personality of their founder, Steve Jobs. Dedicated to finding new, better ways for people leverage technology in their everyday lives, few brands (in fact, maybe only Google and Microsoft) can truly even begin to claim that they deliver the ability to make their users smarter, more capable, and more connected.
This is a challenging archetype to leverage; it’s primarily aligned with brands that innovate and offer advanced technological capabilities. For many of us, being better and more connected relates to our devices. Those brands that are able to compellingly demonstrate the ability to make us better are rewarded for being vital to our everyday lives.
Ritual is a powerful archetype that aligns with brands we use frequently. Frequency appears to help build stronger bonds and keeps a brand at the top of people’s minds (and hearts). Starbucks leads the fast food category in our brand intimacy study. We believe its strong performance is largely due to the ability of the brand to create a meaningful emotional connection with its customers that affects their daily behaviors, tastes, and preferences. Loyal customers (which make up 20 percent of all customers) visit Starbucks an average of 16 times a month.89
The brand more than doubles the weekly and daily average frequency of the category. When a consumer ingrains Starbucks into their daily actions, desire becomes need, and the brand becomes important and necessary. We believe this to be one of the most powerful and desirable archetypes in te
rms of building bonds, and those brands lucky enough to have ritual in their makeup have an incredible advantage. This archetype is favored by certain industries and products we use often, like cars (given the frequency with which people drive), technology (searching Google), social media brands (checking Facebook), and credit cards (paying with your Visa). In fact, we hypothesize that one of the reasons travel brands did poorly in our study may be due to their occasional usage (for most people).
Delivering a unique ethos, with their earthy and cozy interiors, the smell of fresh ground coffee, the sounds of the baristas, and curated music, it is easy to see how Starbucks delivers on their ambition to “define the third place” in our lives. Throughout its humble beginnings, the brand has continually tried to elevate the “coffee-break” into a ritualistic, pleasurable experience—an escape. With a unique vernacular for its coffee names and sizes, and a focus on an authentic vibe, Starbucks has pioneered the ability to elevate the value of a cup of joe to something closer to a religious experience. Not surprisingly, coffee bars have sprung up everywhere since Starbucks’ success—though none have been quite able to catch the leader.
In our study, the brand beats the industry average in the ritual archetype combined with leading the indulgence archetype—a winning combination for a brand to become habitual, while still feeling like an indulgence. Starbucks also leverages their focus as “the third place” to further build ritual behaviors that drive intimacy.
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