Brand Loyalty is bullshit
Brand loyalty is a figment of the imagination of marketers - a wet dream. It starts in the mind of the young marketing executive who falls in love with their brand. And why not? They live it 24 hours a day. It means more to them than a football follower's favourite team. Because it is their livelihood, their future, their identity ... and they become dislocated in their thinking. They can't understand how anyone could not love their brand. They can't understand what sort of evil gets into those who choose their competitors' brands. And they believe those who choose their brand think the same way they do. Brand loyalty, brand passion, brand love. But they are like young German troops invading France in WWII and seeing the normally passionately-free French giving the Nazi salute as they marched on by and not seeing the guns behind their backs. Deluded.
Brand loyalty is a behaviour. Consumers can be brand loyal for many reasons other than love. (Some idiot calls brands "love marks" - only an adman could be so foolish.) Fear is a stronger motivator than love. Habit and inertia drive more buying decisions than love. But it is easy to delude marketing executives that their brand loyals love their brand. They might hate it, but there is nowhere else to go.
Typically, a brand has a small segment of passionately attached loyals, a larger segment of repertoire shoppers, and a large segment of bed-hoppers who take the best deal, no matter who is making the offer, because they believe brand is bullshit and simply a tax on consumers.
Let's face it, a truly brand loyal person is a bore. No growth. Stuck. About as much fun as Latin. A relationship needs an element of danger and risk to make it exciting and spicy. Give me a lover who needs pursuing, not the sickly devotee.