Response to "Do I Define the Labels, or Do the Labels Define Me?"

This is my response to Leah's post, which can be viewed here: http://popculturedisciple.blogspot.com/2011/02/do-i-define-labels-or-do-labels-define.html

Great post, Leah! I'm glad you touched upon the subject of brand loyalty. It's obvious that there's some kind of symbiotic relationship between a person's identity and what they wear, own, and buy. I completely agree with you when you say that "consumers have become more brand loyal to those things that are trendy, and the almost cult like loyalty begins to become part of their personal definition".

With that said, I think your post raises several important issues on how brand loyalty and personal identity can defy one another. Since consumers are more prone to become brand loyal to the things that are trendy, what happens when these trends start to garner unfavourable reviews? Will the consumer stay loyal to the brand, or abandon it just like any other trend? Furthermore, if the consumer chooses to revoke their loyalty from a brand, will they still have a personal identity?

Take Crocs footwear, for example. I don't even know if you can consider calling them a fashion trend in the first place, but I personally don't like Crocs so I'll try to restrain myself from being biased. But anyway, I remember seeing almost everyone donning Crocs a few years ago. It was the trend back then and some of my friends managed to get sucked into buying them. They even bought the same style in different highlighter colours (ugh). It was brand loyalty at its finest. But as the months went buy, I noticed less people were wearing them; my friends stopped wearing Crocs altogether. More and more hate reviews were given about Crocs and even a website dedicated to eliminating Crocs was created.

So going back to what I was saying earlier, do the consumers who were then loyal to Crocs but ended up abandoning the brand still have a personal identity? I think this is when the relationship between brand loyalty and personal identity become ambiguous. Possibly, people just moved on and substituted their brand loyalty to Crocs for something else...hopefully something more substantial.

All I know is, my friends never want to speak of it again. But of course, the occasional "Omg, do you remember when you used to wear Crocs??" comes up every now and then.