How strongly people identify with companies and brands in Switzerland
Die «Identitätsstudie Schweiz 2021» von FehrAdvice & Partner zeigt, mit welchen Unternehmen sich Kunden und Nicht-Kunden am meisten identifizieren. Die Migros setzt sich an die Spitze des Rankings. Die Pandemie und die Digitalisierung spielen bei der Identitätsbildung eine zunehmend wichtige Rolle.
For the third time, FehrAdvice & Partners has published the Identity Study in collaboration with the market research institute Innofact, in which the identity values of 169 companies were surveyed. In particular, FehrAdvice & Partners examined the winners and losers of the study as well as the differences in relationship skills in the analog and digital world.
The generally more volatile market environment, faster innovation cycles and open markets mean that many companies and brands are increasingly at risk of being replaced by other products and service providers. Customer identity is therefore an important factor in counteracting this risk. It measures how strongly people identify with a company or brand.
A strong identity leads to greater customer loyalty and more satisfied customers with less price sensitivity, who also act as brand ambassadors. "The global Covid crisis is changing customers' consumer behavior. They are becoming more price-sensitive, more frugal and more active in the digital space than before. This makes a strong customer identity all the more important and an indispensable part of a company's competitive strategy," explains Luca Geisseler, Managing Partner & Executive Behavioral Designer at FehrAdvice & Partners. A strong identity is very difficult to copy and therefore represents a strong differentiating factor.
The identity study shows that Swiss companies and brands such as Migros (1st place), Lindt (2nd place), Ovomaltine (3rd place) and Coop (5th place) have very high identity scores. Die Mobiliar (7th place) and SRrf.ch (9th place) also made it into the top 10, although the digital brands Google (4th place), WhatsApp (6th place), YouTube (8th place) and Wikipedia (10th place) have worked their way into the top group during the pandemic. Raiffeisen and PayPal have high identity scores in the financial sector category, Migros ahead of Coop and Ikea in the retail sector and Die Mobiliar ahead of Axa and Helvetia in the insurance sector.
Digital gap in retail
The study also draws attention to the fact that there are still major differences in customer identity between the analog and digital worlds. This can be seen, for example, in the "digital gap" of brands such as Migros and Coop, which have not been able to transfer their strong analog identity to the digital world.
These results show that there is still great potential for Swiss companies in the digital space to better position themselves in the battle for attention. "We are surprised that the upswing caused by the pandemic failed to materialize for digital grocery retailers. Most analogue brands fail to make the transition to the digital world because human behavior in the digital world is systematically different from that in the analogue world," says Geisseler.
Finally, the results of the study shed light on the difference in identity values between customers and non-customers. "In-depth knowledge of identity drivers and the initiatives derived from them open up the opportunity to increase customer loyalty and turn non-users into customers," explains Geisseler.
The key findings of the study
- A large number of companies fail to create an identity, neither in the digital nor in the analog world.
- Even companies that are particularly identity-creating in the analog world only manage to be identity-creating in the digital world to a limited extent.
- On average, digital companies have less of an identity than analog companies. Nevertheless, they have significantly increased their identity compared to the previous year.
- The transition from an analog to a digital world is often difficult. It is important to remember that people's behavior in the digital world differs from that of the analog world.
The empirical "Identity Study Switzerland" is compiled annually on the basis of behavioral economics research on identity formation. It examines the question of whether there are differences in the analog and digital world. In addition, the identity values of customers and non-customers are considered separately. The study emphasizes the importance of a sound and precise knowledge of identity drivers in order to develop targeted prototypes that sustainably strengthen the corporate identity.
