September 25, 2025 • 29 mins
What drives customers to cling fiercely to a brand, even when it means paying more or overlooking problems others wouldn’t forgive? Is our political identity quietly fueling a new kind of “super loyalty” that’s transforming customer behavior, for better or worse?
In this episode of the Delighted Customers podcast, I dive into these burning questions with my returning guest, Dr. Forrest Morgeson, associate professor, researcher, and interim chairperson of the Marketing Department at Michigan State University's Eli Broad College of Business. Forrest, drawing on a unique blend of academic rigor and industry insight, explores how political polarization isn’t just shaping national conversations—it’s shaping the way brands connect with customers, and how those customers, in turn, connect back.
If you’re in marketing, customer experience, or simply care about understanding what really makes customers tick in today’s politically charged climate, this episode is for you. Forrest’s background with the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), along with his extensive research on brand loyalty and the nuances of political extremism, make him a must-listen expert. He’s not just sharing theories—he’s revealing data-driven insights you can act on, whether you’re a CX leader or a curious consumer.
Here are three essential questions Forrest answers on the show:
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What is the surprising link between political extremism and “super loyalty” to brands, and how does this affect both customers and companies?
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Why do politically extreme customers sometimes become brand evangelists—defending their favorite brands even after service failures or price hikes?
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What practical ethical and strategic lessons should business leaders take away when targeting or retaining highly loyal customer segments in a polarized marketplace?
Don’t miss this timely, thought-provoking conversation—listen now and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Find Delighted Customers on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or wherever you download your favorite podcasts!
Meet Forrest Morgeson
Forrest Morgeson, Ph.D., is an associate professor of marketing at the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University, where he currently serves as the interim chair of the Marketing Department. With broad expertise spanning marketing strategy, customer satisfaction, and management, Forrest has played a pivotal role as co-director of the doctoral program and is deeply involved in shaping the next generation of business leaders at MSU.
He is renowned for his work with the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), where his research examines how consumers evaluate companies, sectors, and even government services over time. Forrest’s latest research breaks new ground by investigating the relationship between political identity and customer loyalty, shedding light on how political extremism can create deeply attached, even “defensive,” customers. He is a passionate educator, a prolific researcher, and has been published in leading journals on topics ranging from service satisfaction to the psychological underpinnings of loyalty.
To learn more or connect with Forrest, visit his faculty page at MSU or connect with him on LinkedIn.
Show Notes & References
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American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI): theacsi.org
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Oliver’s Framework for Loyalty (referenced work on the stages of customer loyalty): See summary on the four stages
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Recent case studies mentioned: Bud Light controversy | Target Pride campaign blowback
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Connect with Forrest Morgeson: Michigan State University Bio | LinkedIn
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Today on the Delighted Customers podcast, I'm excited to bring back
to the show Forrest Morgeson, who is an associate
professor in the Department of Marketing at the Eli Broad College
of Business at Michigan State University. He's
also the faculty member who
I report to as a member of the faculty myself,
(00:22):
as a professor of practice, and it's been a pleasure.
He's serving as the interim chairperson of the marketing department
and was previously co director of the doctoral program in
marketing. He teaches marketing, management, marketing strategy, and
a whole bunch of great other things at msu. And
his background is really interesting because he's been very involved in
(00:44):
the acsi, which is the customer
satisfaction index that takes a look at different sectors and
industries and government and gives us a sense of
how consumers view these different sectors over time
and tell us a story about how we're doing overall and
maybe identify some opportunities for tweaking. In his
(01:07):
background. He has also been involved in writing
papers. And one particular area of research that
we're going to talk about today involves something that we
have not talked about at all on the show
before, and that is how people who
are on both sides of the political spectrum connect to the loyalty,
(01:29):
the dissent, the degree of loyalty that they have to their
organization. So with that long intro, Forest,
welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
Forest, can you tell us there's been a lot of research,
I'm sure over time about different segments and different
ways that people companies try to understand their
(01:52):
customers base or their potential customer base, one of which
would look at where people align politically and how and
you know how well, or not so well they can try to
engage that customer base. What was the white space
for your research in this area that didn't
current, that didn't exist before? That's a good question.
(02:14):
I think if you look back over the research, particularly in marketing,
a big new interest in how
a changing political landscape was impacting what marketers
were doing, how they were understanding their customers, started about
15 years ago. And that coincides pretty closely with the
rise in what some people have called the hyper partisan era in
(02:37):
American politics. There tends to be a great deal of
partisanship and polarization that has really emerged since the late
double O's, I think. But it really began to be noticed by
folks in political psychology and political science
about 15 years ago. And so a lot of literature grew
in those disciplines and that impacted marketing. And marketers started
(02:59):
taking a stronger interest in how are these changing political
conditions going to impact our ability to sell to customers? Is it
changing the way customers perceive us and interact with us? And
that's sort of the genesis of our interest in this research. My colleagues and
I, we've been working on the paper for a few years
now. And one of the things that sets our study
(03:21):
aside a little bit is that a lot of the literature that has come earlier
had a natural tendency to compare and contrast the liberal
consumer and the conservative consumer. What our paper is
focused on is another element of political polarization, which is
the movement towards the extremes on the political
spectrum on both the left and the right. And what we really do is compare
(03:43):
and contrast those more politically extreme individuals with your
moderates, your centrists, your folks who aren't political at all,
sort of in the middle there. And so that's our jumping off point in
comparing and contrasting those. And we treat them very much as customer
segments, the political extreme versus the political center. And
we make the comparisons there. So did you have a
(04:05):
thesis going into this? I could tell you exactly how the idea came
to my mind when we first started working on the paper.
I was reading a lot of literature which was doing these compare and
contrast. You know, conservatives tend to be more X, liberals tend to be more
Y. You know, I said, I've
existed in both worlds, places where I'm surrounded by
(04:28):
relatively conservative people. And, you know, I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It's
a relatively strong liberal population. And I found something
fundamentally wrong about the stories that were being told or
incomplete about the stories that were being told in that. I said,
there's a lot more similarity between the far
left and the far right than people think there is. It's sort of, you know,
(04:50):
to quote a famous work on the topic from
75 years ago, you know, political extremists tend to
be of the same mind. They strong political movements and strong
political ideologies tend to attract very similar people. It's just
they branch off some to the left and some to the right, but the same
type of people are in those two categories. And that was the kernel of
(05:12):
an idea. And we started gathering data and looking at it, and it turns out,
you know, at least according to what we're writing, it turns out to be correct,
that there are a lot of similarities between those groups. Set
this up for us in terms of how you. How you began
to set up the research and why you set it up that way.
We first turned to some secondary data that we already
(05:33):
had available. And you mentioned the American Customer Satisfaction Index earlier.
Within that data, we've got as you mentioned, a whole bunch
of customer satisfaction ratings or interviews of
individual consumers for a wide array of different
companies. For some of that data, we already had data
on their political leanings, their political
(05:55):
affiliation, or political ideology because it was tied to a
segmentation variable we had for the federal government studies that we were doing.
So we had a pretty sizable data set where we
had both customers ratings of their
satisfaction with companies, their loyalty to companies and so forth,
as well as those same customers political affiliation.
(06:18):
And so that's the data we started with, and it sort of confirmed
our hypotheses. And then we did some additional studies in
controlled environments where we could have treatment and control groups and tease
out the effects a little bit more from a causal perspective. And we set
the study up that way. Okay, and if you don't mind
sharing, what were the top two or three
(06:40):
key findings and what surprised you the most?
Two or three key findings. I mean, we've got a wealth
of findings. We all fall in love with our own papers, but we got a
wealth of findings in this particular paper. We find that politically
extreme customers are, in fact, more loyal to brands.
We also find that they tend to be more satisfied customers of the
(07:02):
companies with which they're interacting. If you think about, you know, the really
political, politically intense people out there, they tend to be really loyal to their
ideas, to their ideology, to their political parties. And
there's a spillover effect where that also seems to apply
to companies. So they tend to be really satisfied, brand loyal. And if
you go from a sort of a typical marketing
(07:23):
perspective, you would consider those to be some of your most valuable
customers, those strong, strong loyalists. We find
that this holds. And in fact, the
effect is accentuated for politically extreme customers when they're
faced with what we call threats. So if they complain to the company,
they have some kind of a service failure, they complain to the company, they
(07:45):
actually tend to get more loyal. Following that politically extreme
customers, that is, tend to get more loyal after these kinds of. We
differentiate between internal and external threats, but we see that
the effect is accentuated, meaning that what happens for the politically extreme
folks is that sort of a defense mechanism kicks in and
they, you know, they reject disconfirming evidence of the
(08:08):
of excellence of the brand to which they are loyal. So
even in troubled times, they tend to be more loyal customers and
even more so than the. Than the customers in the middle. So that, I think,
is another important finding. We look at some of the boundary conditions.
We also frame it, though, as something of a negative for customers. Leave
Some upside to having more politically intense or politically
(08:30):
extreme customers for companies, for the customers themselves. We
find that there are some negative implications to this. So one thing that
we do both through that big secondary data set we have and some
additional controlled studies is
we look at these customers reaction to price
increases by the firm. And what we find is that even when presented
(08:52):
with an alternative product or service that's virtually identical in terms
of its quality, in terms of its features, the more
politically extreme customers won't switch. They'll stay with their brand at a
higher price point even when there's an alternative that would be financially
beneficial to them. So we see there being some,
some consumer well being drawbacks to the more politically extreme
(09:15):
customers and some things that may have a more sort of regulatory
dimension to it. And how consumers are
targeted by companies. Are they being targeted because of their political extremism
with companies knowing that these folks are willing to pay more for products?
And, and so it is sort of a mixed bag, you know, and
we're excited to see the results come out there because I think they have pretty
(09:37):
important ramifications. As you're, as you're
sharing the relationship
between politically extreme customers and
loyalty. I can't help but think of, in the course that I
teach, we go over something called Oliver's framework for loyalty. And
in his framework he talks about the four stages of
(09:58):
loyalty. The first stage is
really all about functionality or convenience. Yeah, they
shop and as you go deeper there's like a preference
for brand. Now I actually prefer your brand over another brand
if all things were equal. And then you go deeper down and there's like
this emotional connection to the brand where I'm
(10:21):
identifying personally with the brand. And I couldn't think of
a more
direct correlation in terms of the conversation with Oliver's
framework of that fourth stage and what you're talking about because you've got
both the emotion and the personal identification with the
brand. Say more about that. You
(10:43):
know, it's interesting you bring that up. One of the things we found and this
study actually isn't being used in our, the current version of our paper right now,
but a couple of years ago we went into the study and found that more
politically extreme customers tend to
assume that the company they do business with shares their political
identity. So if you just cold ask a person with no
(11:05):
knowledge about a company's who they donate to or is
the CEO left or right or anything like that, you ask someone
on the left or the right that's more extreme in their political views, hey, what,
what political affiliation do you believe this company has?
They're going to say, yeah, they're identified with
me. They're like me. Right. And I think that gets to the emotional
(11:27):
attachment you're talking about. Sort of a strong bond between
consumer and company is assumed to exist even with no
objective evidence to that end. And that would be kind
of a fun little research to do and say, you know, my mind
goes right to Tide, like Detergent and Procter and Gamble. And,
you know, could it be that you have someone who says, oh, yeah,
(11:49):
Procter Gamble's definitely conservative. They think the way I do. And some,
some. The next person saying, oh, yeah, they're liberal. They believe what I believe.
Yeah, yeah, that's. That's. That's essentially it. Right.
We, you know, I think part of it, again, gets, you know, an
attempt on the part of these more politically intense
individuals to shield themselves from
(12:12):
cognitive dissonance. Right. They don't want to believe that they might be doing business
with a brand that is opposed to their strong
political identity. And so the default assumption is, is that,
yeah, I really like this brand. They must share my political
identity. And unless I have information otherwise, I'm going to assume that they
do getting that information, and this is something we do look at in the paper,
(12:35):
that disconfirming information can upset that connection between
customer, politically extreme customer and brand. If they find evidence
that that more clearly identifies this company with the
other side, then that loyalty relationship weakens. That's
another study we do in the paper, the misalignment
scenario where they find that their company is, in fact, not aligned with
(12:58):
their political identity. That weakens the relationship between political
extremism and brand loyalty. Okay, well, we're going
to talk about some ideas that business leaders can
leverage based on some of the research that you're getting very
close to publishing. But I want to double click on the fourth level that
Oliver talks about in terms of that loyalty. That is
(13:21):
deep. And we hadn't planned to talk about this. It's just coming to my mind
now is he talks about, not only at this fourth level
are they. They buy the product, a repeat purchase, they
will buy even at a slightly higher price than their peer
group. They will forgive mistakes when you mess up.
But then the last piece of it is. So they're very sticky, but the last
(13:44):
piece of it is they'll defend the brand. And that. That sounds like what you
were talking about. It's like even. Even if it kind of defies logic a
little bit, their emotions kick in and they defend the brand. Absolutely. And
that again, very much fits in with our finding for this particular
segment of what we call politically extreme customers. One of the
phrases that we use a couple of times is they become brand evangelists
(14:06):
very much like politically extreme customers do when it comes to their
ideology. They'll stand up and say, no, you are absolutely wrong. You know, this
is the right way. And they'll do the same thing for companies. They're more
likely to engage in positive word of mouth about companies. And even in times
of, you know, some kind of objective failure that they experience,
they not only tend to maintain that
(14:29):
evangelical nature, they get stronger in their defense of the
brand in those troubled times. No, no, no, no, no. You know, this was,
this wasn't their fault. Right. This couldn't be their fault. It's somebody else's fault.
They'll take that kind of in defense of their own, you know, their
own political identity to some extent. They'll defend the brand even when
it fail. And you mentioned earlier, looking at
(14:51):
it from a macro standpoint, that, you know, good, yes,
for the company, more profits because they're less, less likely to leave
over price differences, but bad maybe
for the consumer in that maybe it's not in their own best interest
to pick a particular brand that,
you know is maybe there's one that's less expensive.
(15:15):
Sure. That provide the same functionality or obviously
value gets tricky. Right. Because value starts to bring an emotion. Right,
right. Value is different. But what we do look at it in this study is
actual price paid and we're able to manipulate that. Right. So, you
know, you take a product and you say you're really loyal to this product. Okay.
Now they raised their price by 25%. A competitive product that has the
(15:37):
same features, same quality, same attributes, et cetera, is
available for purchase. Do you buy the other
objectively less expensive but otherwise equal product? And
they say no. And so there comes a point when that's harmful to consumer
well being. Right. We want to try to make sure that we're
setting up a situation where consumers are doing what's in their own best financial interests.
(15:59):
Particularly now when we've got, you know, prices increasing for a range of
goods and services, you would hope that consumers are, have the tools
necessary to make sure that they're making the right choice and picking things
that are financially responsible for them as consumers. So there is
a downside to it. From that perspective, you're sounding
more like an economics professor when you get into that than a marketing
(16:21):
professor. Well, consumer wellbeing is important.
And I think in the marketing discipline as a whole, we've paid much more attention
to the ethical dimensions of marketing. And I think that's a good thing. I think
we need to make sure that what we're doing in marketing.
Yes. Is helpful to the bottom line of the firm, is creating
profit for businesses. And that's our goal in business schools all over
(16:44):
the world. At the same time, we want to also make sure that consumers have
the tools and resources needed to make good decisions that are right for
them and for their own economic situation.
And I don't really see a conflict in that. I mean, we're in an age
now where a lot of companies are
paying more than lip service to being good social partners.
(17:06):
Right. To being partners with consumers and doing all of the
things that, you know, we classify under ESG now or
sustainability and that sort of thing. And having sustainable consumers.
Right. Consumers that are making wise decisions is in the best interest
for companies in the long run as well. So what outcomes
would you say the research points to
(17:28):
that could help businesses leverage the
info, the data that you will produce here
to. To, you know, talking about sustainable competitive
advantage, but also without exploiting customers? Yeah, I
mean, I think the easiest thing that this study does is it sort of, from
one perspective, points to a group of customers that you can expect are going to
(17:51):
be, you know, more loyal, more committed to your brand, less
sensitive to price increases that you may need to make as
a firm. And, you know, obviously, if you look across the United States,
there's lots of places that you can identify geographically and say, okay,
our company in this area is probably going to, you know, see some positive
outcomes from the type of consumer that we have there.
(18:14):
And so I think that's, you know, a fairly straightforward, you know, just even if
it's just to understand the data that you're getting back from, say, surveying that you're
doing of customers and their reaction to your brand. This can help
clarify what you're seeing in the data to some extent.
And, you know, I think for positive or negative, this. This trend is likely
to proceed for a while. We're going to have a higher proportion of more politically
(18:35):
extreme customers in the population. And so, you know,
understanding that just from a neutral perspective and understanding what it might do
to your. To the data that you're seeing back, for example, is important. I
think it also gives us sort of a call, as marketers
say, okay, we want to make sure that we're behaving in an ethical manner and
how we're targeting and segmenting Customers. We don't want to
(18:57):
in any way, shape or form be responsible for increased political
extremism, for example. Right. We don't want to take advantage of
consumers in that way. We want to make sure that we're doing this in an
ethical manner as well. This finding can help firms, firms that are
so inclined, you know, understand that they're dealing with this
kind of customer and what may or may not be the right path and
(19:18):
marketing to them. So, you know, we see
you can't help but watch, let's say, TV commercials, for instance, and
built into the design of the commercial, whoever architected the commercial,
some either, either with the people involved, the animals
involved, children involved in the commercial, perhaps
there's a tilt toward one side or the other.
(19:41):
And my guess is that when they thought through the storyboard of
the commercial, they considered this audience that, that
was political in one way or another. And could you, for
maybe, maybe this be third rail a little bit? Because we try and stay,
for those listening, we try and stay clear of politics, religion,
sin, goods and services. But at the same time, here we're talking about
(20:04):
a legitimate marketing question. And here I'm talking, setting up the scenario of
a TV commercial that could, you know, with intention. They're
storyboarding. They know their audience. You know, to what extent,
I guess, could it be, could they. Could this thing like
backfire? They're selling something to the company,
let's say it's a marketing agency to the company that's going to
(20:27):
get them better business results. What are the risks there of kind of
tilting too far in that direction? Yeah, I mean, that's
not really. Like you said, you know, the core question. Our paper is looking
at folks both left and right, just people who tend to be more politically
extreme, engaged, intense, whatever the word that you want to. You want
to use, folks that are just more strongly political. And so we're not really,
(20:49):
you know, we're not really looking at, you know, we look at misalignment where, you
know, we present the liberal customer with a conservative scenario and see how
that impacts it. But other than that, we're not really trying to, to sort of
make comparisons left versus right. What you're talking about is,
and there's a growing literature about this in marketing,
marketing finance is talking about, management's talking about it.
(21:13):
But what we call sociopolitical activism on the part of firms, and more and more
firms are doing that. They're taking a stand on an issue one way or another.
It may be something that they put into their marketing campaigns. Their
marketing communications. It may be the way that they. The way that
they talk to their shareholders. It may be the political
donations being made by the firm to different parties or groups,
(21:35):
but more and more firms are doing that. And I think what the research,
and this is a big body of growing research that's changing. But I think in
general, what it shows is watch out for misalignment. If you are
going to do that kind of thing
intentionally or unintentionally, and you're not fully aware
of who your customers are and how they're going to respond to this, then you
(21:57):
can get in a lot of trouble. And we've seen these kind of political firestorms
happened to firms a lot over the last 10 to 15 years where
they provide a new product or communicate that
product, advertise that product in a way that's fundamentally in
opposition with the largest share of their customers. Doesn't
even need to be a majority. It can just be a plurality of customers. Right.
(22:21):
The largest group of. Within their segment along some dimension
is fundamentally put off by the way that they're. That they're acting
or advertising and so forth. And that's when trouble starts, Right. When
you manage to. And we have very recent examples of this that were really
high profile. If you do that kind of misalignment, even if you think it'll
go unnoticed or you think it's for the greater good, you
(22:43):
risk alienating a sizable proportion of the people buying your
products. And that's a problem. When you, when you said there was a
couple of recent examples, would you mind sharing one or two?
We've seen some blowback to target over the last
12 months and some of the things that they've done. The Bud Light
case, I guess that's a couple years ago now, but that was pretty, pretty
(23:06):
visible, you know, a pretty visible
political firestorm for that company. I don't even know if their sales
have rebounded from that for that particular product. But, you
know, those are the kind of things, as a political partisan may agree
or disagree with what they're doing, but as a marketer, you have to say, okay,
you need to make sure that what you're doing is not going to offend
(23:28):
a sizable portion of your customer base because that's just bad for business.
Excellent. Great conversation. Didn't expect to get
into Oliver's framework, but this does affect customer
loyalty and in an interesting way. And I can't wait till your
research comes out. I'm sure you can't either. I can't either.
But with that, I want to end with the same question I
(23:51):
asked all my guests. Now I switched about, I don't know, around episode
100 and I think you were on when I was asking customers what advice would
they give to their 20 year old, to their 20 year old self.
But now I've switched it because the name of the show is called the Delighted
Customers Podcast. What delights you as a customer?
Can I answer the first question first? You can. My, my
(24:12):
first answer would be buy Apple. My 20
year old self. I would say find $10,000 somewhere.
It's 1992. Buy all the Apple,
all the Apple stock you can and just sit on it. Just hold.
Sitting on a pile of cash. I would be sitting on seven or eight
figures. What
(24:35):
delights me as a customer? And you know, I always find this,
the gap between my research and my practical life as a consumer. I'm a no
nonsense customer. So a lot of people in,
in marketing now are focused on things like customer engagement and customer
delight and you know, these kinds of the full customer
experience and think of the journey and all of those stuff. I tend to be
(24:57):
a no nonsense customer. So I want it, I want what I want. I want
a fair price for it. I want to get in and out. I don't want
to talk, I don't want frills. I
think there's still space for those kind of customers. I think we're more
numerous than marketers believe sometimes or customer experience
folks believe sometimes the best thing you can do for a customer is have a
(25:17):
frictionless encounter that gets them what they want and they get
out and that's that. And if you do that, they'll come back for
another frictionless, no nonsense, no frills kind of encounters.
I guess that's what delights me as a customer, if that, if that, that makes
any sense. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense.
Great conversation. If people wanted to get a hold of you
(25:39):
to connect, what would be the best way you can find me? All over the
Internet, but at my Michigan State University, go to the marketing page. You'll
find me on the front page there. I love to field questions from
folks and chat about the research that I'm doing. Thanks
so much, Forrest. Pleasure to have you back on the show. Thanks for having
me.
Today on the Delighted Customers podcast, I'm excited to bring back
to the show Forrest Morgeson, who is an associate
professor in the Department of Marketing at the Eli Broad College
of Business at Michigan State University. He's
also the faculty member who
I report to as a member of the faculty myself,
(00:22):
as a professor of practice, and it's been a pleasure.
He's serving as the interim chairperson of the marketing department
and was previously co director of the doctoral program in
marketing. He teaches marketing, management, marketing strategy, and
a whole bunch of great other things at msu. And
his background is really interesting because he's been very involved in
(00:44):
the acsi, which is the customer
satisfaction index that takes a look at different sectors and
industries and government and gives us a sense of
how consumers view these different sectors over time
and tell us a story about how we're doing overall and
maybe identify some opportunities for tweaking. In his
(01:07):
background. He has also been involved in writing
papers. And one particular area of research that
we're going to talk about today involves something that we
have not talked about at all on the show
before, and that is how people who
are on both sides of the political spectrum connect to the loyalty,
(01:29):
the dissent, the degree of loyalty that they have to their
organization. So with that long intro, Forest,
welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
Forest, can you tell us there's been a lot of research,
I'm sure over time about different segments and different
ways that people companies try to understand their
(01:52):
customers base or their potential customer base, one of which
would look at where people align politically and how and
you know how well, or not so well they can try to
engage that customer base. What was the white space
for your research in this area that didn't
current, that didn't exist before? That's a good question.
(02:14):
I think if you look back over the research, particularly in marketing,
a big new interest in how
a changing political landscape was impacting what marketers
were doing, how they were understanding their customers, started about
15 years ago. And that coincides pretty closely with the
rise in what some people have called the hyper partisan era in
(02:37):
American politics. There tends to be a great deal of
partisanship and polarization that has really emerged since the late
double O's, I think. But it really began to be noticed by
folks in political psychology and political science
about 15 years ago. And so a lot of literature grew
in those disciplines and that impacted marketing. And marketers started
(02:59):
taking a stronger interest in how are these changing political
conditions going to impact our ability to sell to customers? Is it
changing the way customers perceive us and interact with us? And
that's sort of the genesis of our interest in this research. My colleagues and
I, we've been working on the paper for a few years
now. And one of the things that sets our study
(03:21):
aside a little bit is that a lot of the literature that has come earlier
had a natural tendency to compare and contrast the liberal
consumer and the conservative consumer. What our paper is
focused on is another element of political polarization, which is
the movement towards the extremes on the political
spectrum on both the left and the right. And what we really do is compare
(03:43):
and contrast those more politically extreme individuals with your
moderates, your centrists, your folks who aren't political at all,
sort of in the middle there. And so that's our jumping off point in
comparing and contrasting those. And we treat them very much as customer
segments, the political extreme versus the political center. And
we make the comparisons there. So did you have a
(04:05):
thesis going into this? I could tell you exactly how the idea came
to my mind when we first started working on the paper.
I was reading a lot of literature which was doing these compare and
contrast. You know, conservatives tend to be more X, liberals tend to be more
Y. You know, I said, I've
existed in both worlds, places where I'm surrounded by
(04:28):
relatively conservative people. And, you know, I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It's
a relatively strong liberal population. And I found something
fundamentally wrong about the stories that were being told or
incomplete about the stories that were being told in that. I said,
there's a lot more similarity between the far
left and the far right than people think there is. It's sort of, you know,
(04:50):
to quote a famous work on the topic from
75 years ago, you know, political extremists tend to
be of the same mind. They strong political movements and strong
political ideologies tend to attract very similar people. It's just
they branch off some to the left and some to the right, but the same
type of people are in those two categories. And that was the kernel of
(05:12):
an idea. And we started gathering data and looking at it, and it turns out,
you know, at least according to what we're writing, it turns out to be correct,
that there are a lot of similarities between those groups. Set
this up for us in terms of how you. How you began
to set up the research and why you set it up that way.
We first turned to some secondary data that we already
(05:33):
had available. And you mentioned the American Customer Satisfaction Index earlier.
Within that data, we've got as you mentioned, a whole bunch
of customer satisfaction ratings or interviews of
individual consumers for a wide array of different
companies. For some of that data, we already had data
on their political leanings, their political
(05:55):
affiliation, or political ideology because it was tied to a
segmentation variable we had for the federal government studies that we were doing.
So we had a pretty sizable data set where we
had both customers ratings of their
satisfaction with companies, their loyalty to companies and so forth,
as well as those same customers political affiliation.
(06:18):
And so that's the data we started with, and it sort of confirmed
our hypotheses. And then we did some additional studies in
controlled environments where we could have treatment and control groups and tease
out the effects a little bit more from a causal perspective. And we set
the study up that way. Okay, and if you don't mind
sharing, what were the top two or three
(06:40):
key findings and what surprised you the most?
Two or three key findings. I mean, we've got a wealth
of findings. We all fall in love with our own papers, but we got a
wealth of findings in this particular paper. We find that politically
extreme customers are, in fact, more loyal to brands.
We also find that they tend to be more satisfied customers of the
(07:02):
companies with which they're interacting. If you think about, you know, the really
political, politically intense people out there, they tend to be really loyal to their
ideas, to their ideology, to their political parties. And
there's a spillover effect where that also seems to apply
to companies. So they tend to be really satisfied, brand loyal. And if
you go from a sort of a typical marketing
(07:23):
perspective, you would consider those to be some of your most valuable
customers, those strong, strong loyalists. We find
that this holds. And in fact, the
effect is accentuated for politically extreme customers when they're
faced with what we call threats. So if they complain to the company,
they have some kind of a service failure, they complain to the company, they
(07:45):
actually tend to get more loyal. Following that politically extreme
customers, that is, tend to get more loyal after these kinds of. We
differentiate between internal and external threats, but we see that
the effect is accentuated, meaning that what happens for the politically extreme
folks is that sort of a defense mechanism kicks in and
they, you know, they reject disconfirming evidence of the
(08:08):
of excellence of the brand to which they are loyal. So
even in troubled times, they tend to be more loyal customers and
even more so than the. Than the customers in the middle. So that, I think,
is another important finding. We look at some of the boundary conditions.
We also frame it, though, as something of a negative for customers. Leave
Some upside to having more politically intense or politically
(08:30):
extreme customers for companies, for the customers themselves. We
find that there are some negative implications to this. So one thing that
we do both through that big secondary data set we have and some
additional controlled studies is
we look at these customers reaction to price
increases by the firm. And what we find is that even when presented
(08:52):
with an alternative product or service that's virtually identical in terms
of its quality, in terms of its features, the more
politically extreme customers won't switch. They'll stay with their brand at a
higher price point even when there's an alternative that would be financially
beneficial to them. So we see there being some,
some consumer well being drawbacks to the more politically extreme
(09:15):
customers and some things that may have a more sort of regulatory
dimension to it. And how consumers are
targeted by companies. Are they being targeted because of their political extremism
with companies knowing that these folks are willing to pay more for products?
And, and so it is sort of a mixed bag, you know, and
we're excited to see the results come out there because I think they have pretty
(09:37):
important ramifications. As you're, as you're
sharing the relationship
between politically extreme customers and
loyalty. I can't help but think of, in the course that I
teach, we go over something called Oliver's framework for loyalty. And
in his framework he talks about the four stages of
(09:58):
loyalty. The first stage is
really all about functionality or convenience. Yeah, they
shop and as you go deeper there's like a preference
for brand. Now I actually prefer your brand over another brand
if all things were equal. And then you go deeper down and there's like
this emotional connection to the brand where I'm
(10:21):
identifying personally with the brand. And I couldn't think of
a more
direct correlation in terms of the conversation with Oliver's
framework of that fourth stage and what you're talking about because you've got
both the emotion and the personal identification with the
brand. Say more about that. You
(10:43):
know, it's interesting you bring that up. One of the things we found and this
study actually isn't being used in our, the current version of our paper right now,
but a couple of years ago we went into the study and found that more
politically extreme customers tend to
assume that the company they do business with shares their political
identity. So if you just cold ask a person with no
(11:05):
knowledge about a company's who they donate to or is
the CEO left or right or anything like that, you ask someone
on the left or the right that's more extreme in their political views, hey, what,
what political affiliation do you believe this company has?
They're going to say, yeah, they're identified with
me. They're like me. Right. And I think that gets to the emotional
(11:27):
attachment you're talking about. Sort of a strong bond between
consumer and company is assumed to exist even with no
objective evidence to that end. And that would be kind
of a fun little research to do and say, you know, my mind
goes right to Tide, like Detergent and Procter and Gamble. And,
you know, could it be that you have someone who says, oh, yeah,
(11:49):
Procter Gamble's definitely conservative. They think the way I do. And some,
some. The next person saying, oh, yeah, they're liberal. They believe what I believe.
Yeah, yeah, that's. That's. That's essentially it. Right.
We, you know, I think part of it, again, gets, you know, an
attempt on the part of these more politically intense
individuals to shield themselves from
(12:12):
cognitive dissonance. Right. They don't want to believe that they might be doing business
with a brand that is opposed to their strong
political identity. And so the default assumption is, is that,
yeah, I really like this brand. They must share my political
identity. And unless I have information otherwise, I'm going to assume that they
do getting that information, and this is something we do look at in the paper,
(12:35):
that disconfirming information can upset that connection between
customer, politically extreme customer and brand. If they find evidence
that that more clearly identifies this company with the
other side, then that loyalty relationship weakens. That's
another study we do in the paper, the misalignment
scenario where they find that their company is, in fact, not aligned with
(12:58):
their political identity. That weakens the relationship between political
extremism and brand loyalty. Okay, well, we're going
to talk about some ideas that business leaders can
leverage based on some of the research that you're getting very
close to publishing. But I want to double click on the fourth level that
Oliver talks about in terms of that loyalty. That is
(13:21):
deep. And we hadn't planned to talk about this. It's just coming to my mind
now is he talks about, not only at this fourth level
are they. They buy the product, a repeat purchase, they
will buy even at a slightly higher price than their peer
group. They will forgive mistakes when you mess up.
But then the last piece of it is. So they're very sticky, but the last
(13:44):
piece of it is they'll defend the brand. And that. That sounds like what you
were talking about. It's like even. Even if it kind of defies logic a
little bit, their emotions kick in and they defend the brand. Absolutely. And
that again, very much fits in with our finding for this particular
segment of what we call politically extreme customers. One of the
phrases that we use a couple of times is they become brand evangelists
(14:06):
very much like politically extreme customers do when it comes to their
ideology. They'll stand up and say, no, you are absolutely wrong. You know, this
is the right way. And they'll do the same thing for companies. They're more
likely to engage in positive word of mouth about companies. And even in times
of, you know, some kind of objective failure that they experience,
they not only tend to maintain that
(14:29):
evangelical nature, they get stronger in their defense of the
brand in those troubled times. No, no, no, no, no. You know, this was,
this wasn't their fault. Right. This couldn't be their fault. It's somebody else's fault.
They'll take that kind of in defense of their own, you know, their
own political identity to some extent. They'll defend the brand even when
it fail. And you mentioned earlier, looking at
(14:51):
it from a macro standpoint, that, you know, good, yes,
for the company, more profits because they're less, less likely to leave
over price differences, but bad maybe
for the consumer in that maybe it's not in their own best interest
to pick a particular brand that,
you know is maybe there's one that's less expensive.
(15:15):
Sure. That provide the same functionality or obviously
value gets tricky. Right. Because value starts to bring an emotion. Right,
right. Value is different. But what we do look at it in this study is
actual price paid and we're able to manipulate that. Right. So, you
know, you take a product and you say you're really loyal to this product. Okay.
Now they raised their price by 25%. A competitive product that has the
(15:37):
same features, same quality, same attributes, et cetera, is
available for purchase. Do you buy the other
objectively less expensive but otherwise equal product? And
they say no. And so there comes a point when that's harmful to consumer
well being. Right. We want to try to make sure that we're
setting up a situation where consumers are doing what's in their own best financial interests.
(15:59):
Particularly now when we've got, you know, prices increasing for a range of
goods and services, you would hope that consumers are, have the tools
necessary to make sure that they're making the right choice and picking things
that are financially responsible for them as consumers. So there is
a downside to it. From that perspective, you're sounding
more like an economics professor when you get into that than a marketing
(16:21):
professor. Well, consumer wellbeing is important.
And I think in the marketing discipline as a whole, we've paid much more attention
to the ethical dimensions of marketing. And I think that's a good thing. I think
we need to make sure that what we're doing in marketing.
Yes. Is helpful to the bottom line of the firm, is creating
profit for businesses. And that's our goal in business schools all over
(16:44):
the world. At the same time, we want to also make sure that consumers have
the tools and resources needed to make good decisions that are right for
them and for their own economic situation.
And I don't really see a conflict in that. I mean, we're in an age
now where a lot of companies are
paying more than lip service to being good social partners.
(17:06):
Right. To being partners with consumers and doing all of the
things that, you know, we classify under ESG now or
sustainability and that sort of thing. And having sustainable consumers.
Right. Consumers that are making wise decisions is in the best interest
for companies in the long run as well. So what outcomes
would you say the research points to
(17:28):
that could help businesses leverage the
info, the data that you will produce here
to. To, you know, talking about sustainable competitive
advantage, but also without exploiting customers? Yeah, I
mean, I think the easiest thing that this study does is it sort of, from
one perspective, points to a group of customers that you can expect are going to
(17:51):
be, you know, more loyal, more committed to your brand, less
sensitive to price increases that you may need to make as
a firm. And, you know, obviously, if you look across the United States,
there's lots of places that you can identify geographically and say, okay,
our company in this area is probably going to, you know, see some positive
outcomes from the type of consumer that we have there.
(18:14):
And so I think that's, you know, a fairly straightforward, you know, just even if
it's just to understand the data that you're getting back from, say, surveying that you're
doing of customers and their reaction to your brand. This can help
clarify what you're seeing in the data to some extent.
And, you know, I think for positive or negative, this. This trend is likely
to proceed for a while. We're going to have a higher proportion of more politically
(18:35):
extreme customers in the population. And so, you know,
understanding that just from a neutral perspective and understanding what it might do
to your. To the data that you're seeing back, for example, is important. I
think it also gives us sort of a call, as marketers
say, okay, we want to make sure that we're behaving in an ethical manner and
how we're targeting and segmenting Customers. We don't want to
(18:57):
in any way, shape or form be responsible for increased political
extremism, for example. Right. We don't want to take advantage of
consumers in that way. We want to make sure that we're doing this in an
ethical manner as well. This finding can help firms, firms that are
so inclined, you know, understand that they're dealing with this
kind of customer and what may or may not be the right path and
(19:18):
marketing to them. So, you know, we see
you can't help but watch, let's say, TV commercials, for instance, and
built into the design of the commercial, whoever architected the commercial,
some either, either with the people involved, the animals
involved, children involved in the commercial, perhaps
there's a tilt toward one side or the other.
(19:41):
And my guess is that when they thought through the storyboard of
the commercial, they considered this audience that, that
was political in one way or another. And could you, for
maybe, maybe this be third rail a little bit? Because we try and stay,
for those listening, we try and stay clear of politics, religion,
sin, goods and services. But at the same time, here we're talking about
(20:04):
a legitimate marketing question. And here I'm talking, setting up the scenario of
a TV commercial that could, you know, with intention. They're
storyboarding. They know their audience. You know, to what extent,
I guess, could it be, could they. Could this thing like
backfire? They're selling something to the company,
let's say it's a marketing agency to the company that's going to
(20:27):
get them better business results. What are the risks there of kind of
tilting too far in that direction? Yeah, I mean, that's
not really. Like you said, you know, the core question. Our paper is looking
at folks both left and right, just people who tend to be more politically
extreme, engaged, intense, whatever the word that you want to. You want
to use, folks that are just more strongly political. And so we're not really,
(20:49):
you know, we're not really looking at, you know, we look at misalignment where, you
know, we present the liberal customer with a conservative scenario and see how
that impacts it. But other than that, we're not really trying to, to sort of
make comparisons left versus right. What you're talking about is,
and there's a growing literature about this in marketing,
marketing finance is talking about, management's talking about it.
(21:13):
But what we call sociopolitical activism on the part of firms, and more and more
firms are doing that. They're taking a stand on an issue one way or another.
It may be something that they put into their marketing campaigns. Their
marketing communications. It may be the way that they. The way that
they talk to their shareholders. It may be the political
donations being made by the firm to different parties or groups,
(21:35):
but more and more firms are doing that. And I think what the research,
and this is a big body of growing research that's changing. But I think in
general, what it shows is watch out for misalignment. If you are
going to do that kind of thing
intentionally or unintentionally, and you're not fully aware
of who your customers are and how they're going to respond to this, then you
(21:57):
can get in a lot of trouble. And we've seen these kind of political firestorms
happened to firms a lot over the last 10 to 15 years where
they provide a new product or communicate that
product, advertise that product in a way that's fundamentally in
opposition with the largest share of their customers. Doesn't
even need to be a majority. It can just be a plurality of customers. Right.
(22:21):
The largest group of. Within their segment along some dimension
is fundamentally put off by the way that they're. That they're acting
or advertising and so forth. And that's when trouble starts, Right. When
you manage to. And we have very recent examples of this that were really
high profile. If you do that kind of misalignment, even if you think it'll
go unnoticed or you think it's for the greater good, you
(22:43):
risk alienating a sizable proportion of the people buying your
products. And that's a problem. When you, when you said there was a
couple of recent examples, would you mind sharing one or two?
We've seen some blowback to target over the last
12 months and some of the things that they've done. The Bud Light
case, I guess that's a couple years ago now, but that was pretty, pretty
(23:06):
visible, you know, a pretty visible
political firestorm for that company. I don't even know if their sales
have rebounded from that for that particular product. But, you
know, those are the kind of things, as a political partisan may agree
or disagree with what they're doing, but as a marketer, you have to say, okay,
you need to make sure that what you're doing is not going to offend
(23:28):
a sizable portion of your customer base because that's just bad for business.
Excellent. Great conversation. Didn't expect to get
into Oliver's framework, but this does affect customer
loyalty and in an interesting way. And I can't wait till your
research comes out. I'm sure you can't either. I can't either.
But with that, I want to end with the same question I
(23:51):
asked all my guests. Now I switched about, I don't know, around episode
100 and I think you were on when I was asking customers what advice would
they give to their 20 year old, to their 20 year old self.
But now I've switched it because the name of the show is called the Delighted
Customers Podcast. What delights you as a customer?
Can I answer the first question first? You can. My, my
(24:12):
first answer would be buy Apple. My 20
year old self. I would say find $10,000 somewhere.
It's 1992. Buy all the Apple,
all the Apple stock you can and just sit on it. Just hold.
Sitting on a pile of cash. I would be sitting on seven or eight
figures. What
(24:35):
delights me as a customer? And you know, I always find this,
the gap between my research and my practical life as a consumer. I'm a no
nonsense customer. So a lot of people in,
in marketing now are focused on things like customer engagement and customer
delight and you know, these kinds of the full customer
experience and think of the journey and all of those stuff. I tend to be
(24:57):
a no nonsense customer. So I want it, I want what I want. I want
a fair price for it. I want to get in and out. I don't want
to talk, I don't want frills. I
think there's still space for those kind of customers. I think we're more
numerous than marketers believe sometimes or customer experience
folks believe sometimes the best thing you can do for a customer is have a
(25:17):
frictionless encounter that gets them what they want and they get
out and that's that. And if you do that, they'll come back for
another frictionless, no nonsense, no frills kind of encounters.
I guess that's what delights me as a customer, if that, if that, that makes
any sense. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense.
Great conversation. If people wanted to get a hold of you
(25:39):
to connect, what would be the best way you can find me? All over the
Internet, but at my Michigan State University, go to the marketing page. You'll
find me on the front page there. I love to field questions from
folks and chat about the research that I'm doing. Thanks
so much, Forrest. Pleasure to have you back on the show. Thanks for having
me.
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