People who were brand loyal??

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A good friend told me the funniest story of his grandmother and brand loyalty that went beyond the brand and down to model level. She lived in a small rural town with only a few car dealers, one of which was the Ford dealer. Sometime in the early ‘60s she bought a new Galaxie 500 when it was the TOL Ford full size sedan. It was a good car and that led to another. By the late ‘60s Ford was really pushing the LTD as the TOL car, but the old lady wasn’t tempted, she loved her Galaxies.

 

One day in late ‘74 she took her then current Galaxie into the dealership for a routine service. While waiting in the showroom she happened to see a brochure on the new ‘75 models and noticed no Galaxies, only the BOL Custom 500 and LTD in the full size lineup as Ford had discontinued the Galaxie name. She was so upset she asked the salesman if they still had any remaining new ‘74 Galaxies. They did, and before the mechanics had finished servicing her old car she had traded it on that last new Galaxie 500.
 
Brand loyalty with autos...

My father owned a construction company and his work car was always always a Chevrolet Impala with all the bells and whistles. He leased them and got a new one every two years. My mother drove several different GM makes, mostly Buicks, but my dad, it was always a Chevrolet Impala. Our work trucks and flatbeds were IH.
 
Everything except our Zenith tv growing up was from Sears in our house. We always had a new Ford wagon every 3 years because my great uncle owned the Ford dealership. The only thing from Sears in my house now is an old Craftsman snowblower, Kenmore gas grill and my fathers Craftsman tools. The Ford dealership was sold after my great uncle's death and I switched to GM and stayed there.
 
We were always

All mixed up...A Westinghouse fridge, Hotpoint range,Westinghouse Dryer, Frigidaire washer, GE and Hoover vacuums, Dormeyer mixer, Magnavox RCA Silvertone and Zenith TVs, Stromberg Carlson Hi Fi....Plymouth Ford and Oldsmobile cars!
 
An interesting topic...

About the only "new" brand loyalty I see today is with Apple products. A lot of dyed in the wool PC types I know tried iPhones when they first came out, then bought iPads, then ditched their PCs for Macs. It's a brilliant strategy of offering a quality product at the entry level to get new customers into the ecosystem. I do know of PC loyalists, but not necessarily hardcore brand specific enthusiasts.

Very similar to the old way of getting a new car buyer into a Chevy, moving him to a Pontiac, then to a Buick, and then a top of the line Cad.

Sadly, 99% of the population seems to only want the cheapest product and aren't willing to pay for quality.
 
I definitely see brand loyalty with professional level computer programs, mostly because once you’ve invested time and money to learn the program and keep it up to date it would be even more time consuming and expensive to change. In my case I really dislike spending close to $1000 yearly with Autodesk for Autocad and Revit but the thought of changing is even worse.

I also like WordPerfect. It’s far cheaper than Word and does the same things just as well so I use it for most of my word processing. When I have to use Word it’s an older version but Microsoft has a free patch that allows older versions to read the newer files, hopefully they won’t make any changes for awhile.
 
As for cars, my parents had 4 Pontiacs - '52, '59 Catalina, '67 Tempest & '80 Grand LeMans, all purchased new. My dad also got a used '63 or '64 Star Chief. They also had a '73 Buick Electra, '85 Chevrolet Caprice, and '91 Caprice all bought new. All new cars were GM.

As for appliances, Westinghouse range ('53 that I still have), refrigerator ('54?), FL washers ('55 & '64), dryer ('63), dehumidifier ('60?) and air conditioner ('71). GE made items were dishwasher ('58) and Hotpoint refrigerator ('77). Other appliances at various times were Maytag, Frigidaire, Whirlpool and Amana.
 
Favorite line I heard the other night from a Mac user: "Look, I don't want to have to actually learn anything, I just want results!".

Well that's fine and dandy if you want to shell out a ton of money for Apple products. I will agree that Apple does have some very fierce hard core users.

WordPerfect is still around?

Back in the MS-DOS days that was the hottest WP software of all. But then WP screwed it up when they tried to port it to Windows. Tons of trouble. Eventually Corel bought it and that was the last I heard of it. I can't tell you how many times users created documents with it and then when they go to open them later, they couldn't. But that was at least 15 years ago.
 
Loyalty:

Dad mostly bought Fords up to '77, then Buicks when the new downsized Electra came out that year, that was one all-around excellent car. Appliances, all over the place, no pattern whatever. Computers... well they never had one, but for me it's always a Mac, ever since my first Apple II+. Have a 2002 iMac 500mz that still works and we still use it for some stuff, Apples have the best user interface and reliability, bar none, imo. Just bought a new iPad Air 128 w/ keyboard case (can't get used to screen typing) on Monday... Apple rules!
 
Way back in 1983 Apple pissed me off. I told them I'd never own another Apple product again. They more or less told me "See if we care". And I've kept my word. I have never nor will I ever own an Apple product again.
 
Was going to keep up with Apple for a while - but I've decided this Macbook will be the first and last new product I buy. 

The new Mac OS coming this year sets to break an interface that never needed fixing to "align" it with what is fast becoming "DumbOS." I won't be upgrading - even if for free!

 

The Mac OS interface - its nice, but coming from modern Windows systems I miss some of the "snap" features. I also dislike how programs don't stat fully maximised (MS products, particularly), and you have to do that yourself. 

I DO like the tabbed Finder interface. That and colour-coding files/folders is a very nice touch. 

 

If it wasn't this machine, it would have been a Dell or Acer notebook. We know some hardcore "brainy" Apple hardcores that wouldn't have anything else. You can't put PC in their mouth without them spitting it out. 

 

But I reckon that most of the people who switch to Linux become VERY brand loyal. Another person I know prefers running Linux/BSD on his Macbook :P

 

Other brand loyalty - None in this family, really. Many years ago it was Ford Falcons, and another relative still gets a new Holden (GM) Commodore every couple of years, but thats about it. 

We've a mixture of appliances (F&P/Westinghouse/Panasonic/HP/Apple/JVC/Onkyo/Denon etc). 
 
In the 60's we had different brands for the home and cars were GM. Around 1970 everything became Sears (mostly ordered out of a catalog--small town and local stores were disappearing). Then the Sears items for the home stared falling out of fashion and were replaced by various brands. KitchenAid, Amana, Reliance, York, Maytag, Sylvania, Sony and Samsung. You can probably guess which brands went with type of product. The only thing left in my parent's house that is Sears is the range (there have been 3 gas ones), the furnace (hot water) and the garbage disposer. My Dad is GM loyal and my Mom is Ford loyal.

I buy vintage things that my parents had that worked best and longest. I'm GM loyal on trucks.

That's why I love AW.org and Vacuumland. If you want to know what to buy, just enter.
 
brand loyality

growing up my mom always had Maytag washers, drove Oldsmobile's and cleaned with an Electrolux vacuum cleaner. To this day I use a vintage A408 Maytag automatic, have owned a couple of Oldsmobile's in 1976 and 1978, but I am loyal to Ford now, My next new top loader will be a Speed Queen, reminds me of the way Maytag use to build their machines.
 
Each time that I have viewed this thread, I have thought that perhaps we need a related threat... companies that were CUSTOMER LOYAL. Customers were often brand loyal to companies that were customer loyal. Customer loyalty was not only building a good product (rather than the cheapest product) but a product that offered similar feature characteristics year over year... some companies may focus on offering the newest or flashiest design features, others the most innovative engineering or technical features, others the most durable long lasting machines or those with longest warranties, and others may offer the least change year over year for those customers who didn't want all the 'newest of new' changes. There are a lot of good companies and products still out there today, including companies who desire to make the best product for their customers, but unfortunately and increasingly, it seems that building brand loyalty with the best product is viewed as less profitable than building the product with the lowest cost.
 

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