If you already have a high proportion of loyal current customers, you rarely deal with customer fluctuation and persistent new customer acquisition measures to compensate this instability. Your customer base remains secure and steady, and all investments can go into actual growth. However, if customers are not emotionally loyal to your company, but merely “satisfied”, hundreds of studies have shown that customers will leave quickly as soon as a competitor entices with attractive prices.

Fans will weather a crisis together with their chosen partner. They remain loyal; even if there are quality problems.

Across all sectors, 57% of fan customers answered that they “fully agree” with the statement that they would still buy from “their” provider even if friends or acquaintances advised them not to.

Such commitment is seldom found among “sympathizers” or “mercenaries” type customers. The reason that fans forgive mistakes is the same reason that makes them resistant to negative reviews: their customer relationship is based on an emotional quality, not on performance. Just like sports fans, they remain loyal to their company even in the worst times.

Fans are THE guarantee for sales. They buy more frequently and spend more money on the products of “their” provider. More than any other group of customers! Additionally, fan customers are less price-sensitive: they perceive the conditions of their provider as “better” than other customer groups do. For “mercenary customers” the price is most important – to fans this is secondary, if not irrelevant. This high willingness-to-pay, on the part of the fans, is reflected directly in the providers margin.

No customer will stay in a business relationship with their provider for as long as the fan customer. Fans combine the highest willingness-to-invest with the longest customer relationships. Companies that fail to identify these customers within their customer base do not know who guarantees good sales and they are consistently unable to tap the greatest growth potential. Owing to the unique customer lifetime value of fans, an increase in the fan rate reliably guarantees increasing business success and should be the primary and indisputable goal for every company.