Brand loyalty is a strong thing, and this has its benefits and harms over both short-term and long-term approaches. Let’s think of a scenario: you are a customer loyal to a specific brand of smartphone ever since they were a simple phone company. Before their transition to smartphones, their feature phones (also called dumbphones) were lauded to be among the best when it comes to features, durability, and longevity. You’ve also been buying phones from the brand ever since that time.
Now, in the modern age of smartphones, that brand has severely fallen behind. Their build quality is substandard, the price-to-performance ratio is really bad, and the phones themselves don’t last quite that long as compared to its competitors. Because of the attached brand loyalty and the preconceived notion of durability and features, you may still think that the best smartphone to buy is from that brand. This means that you’re potentially losing out on what you pay for and that your brand loyalty with the associated traits is no longer existing.
This happens every time in every product and business in the market. From home appliances, groceries, furniture, hair services, and even coffee, brand loyalty may cause people to lose out on what is available in the market. The best way to circumvent this is to have an open mind.
If you really want to take advantage and maximize your expenses and their returns, you should try to take a look at what the other companies are offering. Employing different services for the same umbrella of tasks, taking advantage of a multi-cloud strategy for your storage and data backup needs, or simply researching the best product in the category you’d want to buy is a surefire way to achieve the goal.
As a business, why should you do this?
What was explained above applies mostly to individuals. They might have brand loyalties on small things and purchases that could or wouldn’t affect them in the long run. It’s a different ball game when it comes to businesses, however. As a business company, your main goal is to drive up profits, limit expenses, and maximize everything to its greatest efficiency. You couldn’t simply employ a specific mechanical service just because you’ve been with that company for some time.
If you find a new service that’s better at fixing your hardware for a cheaper cost, it’s only natural to take advantage of that company. If you have a need for delivery services, you’d always choose the one that has the best delivery practices, a good reputation for taking care of the packages and do all of these for a better price. You wouldn’t stick to a single brand, or it could severely hinder your success.
Different services at the same time ─ how to do it?
Let’s take, for example, a data service that you need to employ. It has been established that your business could not live off of hard drives alone, so you choose to find a cloud service company. Your needs are the following: data storage, data backup, and cloud computing services. Perhaps you could find a company that does all of these things and has a package that allows you to be able to use all three. This could be a viable option, but this doesn’t always mean that it’s good. Performing data storage, backup, and cloud computing on one single cloud wouldn’t yield the best results for speed and efficiency.
This is where a multi-cloud strategy is viable. Few companies offer this, so extending from one brand is always an option. A multi-cloud strategy is basically employing two or more clouds for tasks at hand. For example, you could have a specific cloud service company that excels in data storage and backup.
However, their cloud computing services are known to cause troubles and are quite slow on the uptake. This is where you could branch out. Employ the company’s data storage and backup plans, then find a different company that is best at cloud computing. This way, even if it might seem that you’re paying for two plans instead of one, you’re still getting the benefits of security and stability in the long run. Not to mention that you’re getting the best of both worlds, so a multi-cloud strategy is the best move for this scenario.
