Marketing Machismo and The Revenge of the Libidos

Or the Metamorphoses of Consumer Loyalty

Jul 25, 2025

white heart shaped balloon with red paint — Photo by Danilo Batista on Unsplash

Loyalty is changing. Traditional brand loyalty based on repeat buying is fading, but emotional and ethical loyalty are on the rise. Marketing must move beyond simple behavior metrics and embrace deeper human connections shaped by values and trust. This shift impacts business strategies and social cohesion alike, calling for new approaches that blend data with empathy. Understanding loyalty’s evolution is key for shaping future markets and communities.

Foreword: The Present and Loyalty in Flux

I originally published the essay below in 2006 in The Hungarian Journal for Marketing and Management (Vol. XI. 2–3, pp. 32–38), where I offered some critical and contrarian reflections on marketing—particularly around consumer and brand loyalty. What follows is the English translation of that piece.

While some ideas may feel dated nearly two decades later, many still resonate today—perhaps even more so in light of how the digital and post-digital era have transformed loyalty.

Today, AI estimates suggest there are close to 1 billion references to “loyalty” on the internet. Of these, 30–35% relate to marketing, making it the most dominant context. In comparison, political loyalty accounts for roughly 5–10%, personal and interpersonal loyalty for 4–8%, workplace and organizational loyalty for just 2–5%, while the remaining 40–50% spans religion, military, and other forms.

Despite the ubiquity of loyalty language, many sources point to a general decline in brand loyalty. For instance, some reports show that loyalty dropped from 77% in 2022 to 69% in 2024. In the US and UK, over half of consumers say they feel less loyal to brands than in the past. Among Generation-Z, this trend is even more pronounced post-pandemic, with 57% reporting weaker brand allegiance.

At the same time, we’re witnessing a countertrend: a rise in emotional and ethical loyalty. Between 2021 and 2024, emotional loyalty—based on deep, personal connection—rose 26%, reaching 35% of consumers. Ethical loyalty—driven by values alignment—climbed 25% over the same period, reaching 30%.

These shifts are reshaping business priorities. Acquiring new customers is now about 60% more expensive than in previous years. As a result, brands are doubling down on retention and lifetime value. Over 90% of major brands now offer loyalty programs, and 75% of consumers prefer brands that do. In 2024, loyalty program engagement rose by 28%, a 40% increase over the previous year. The loyalty management market is projected to grow from ~$15B in 2025 to ~$41B by 2032 .

To keep up, brands are turning to AI-driven personalization, real-time offers, gamification (43% adoption and growing), and omnichannel experiences to drive engagement. Increasingly, loyalty is shaped by shared values—with eco-friendly, ethical, and inclusive brand positioning gaining traction.

You can trace this evolution across several schools of thought:

From Behavioral to Emotional: Early loyalty theory (1950s–70s) focused on repeat purchases, while later frameworks emphasized psychological, emotional, and social bonds.
From Brand-Centric to Consumer-Centric: Relationship marketing and service-dominant logic reframed loyalty around co-creation and customer experience.
Toward Post-Digital Loyalty: Today, loyalty is driven by a blend of data-driven personalization and emotional or ethical alignment. Consumers are loyal to brands that reflect their values—authenticity, sustainability, inclusivity.

In short, the story of loyalty in marketing is far from over. It’s evolving. The theories—and the data—show loyalty in flux.

The essay below, translated into English, reflects my thinking on loyalty as it stood in 2006—some ideas remain relevant, while others invite fresh interpretation. It was never intended as a formal academic work.

The Mourning Professionals, the Ambulant Experts, and Loyalty

Let’s hop online and launch a search engine (loyalty be damned—I almost said Google lol) and look up the term loyalty1. Two immediate findings hit us in the face: (a) there’s an enormously rich literature on loyalty, with thousands upon thousands of publications, and (b) the overwhelming majority of this material comes from the marketing profession.

If we dig deeper than just keyword content analysis—especially in marketing literature—we notice something else: a surprising consensus-in-disagreement. Everyone agrees that consumer loyalty is declining, but everyone interprets this decline differently.

One group writes as if performing a funeral rite—mourning loyalty’s passing, lamenting the loss of brand allegiance or category fidelity. They speak of loyalty as something already dead or on life support, a quaint relic of a bygone marketing era (call them the mourning professionals).

Meanwhile, others position themselves as emergency responders—ambulant experts on call—insisting that loyalty is alive and well, merely undergoing a transformation (call this the ambulance crew).

So, even at the outset, one thing is crystal clear:

Loyalty remains a topic of widespread concern, and there is general agreement that traditional consumer loyalty—whether to a brand or product category—is eroding

Loyalty’s Last Rites and the Cult of Marketing Machismo

Marketers are seasoned at mobilizing massive resources to understand consumers, yet direct, authentic connections between marketers and real people are rare (respect for the few).2

Consumers3 remain distant, intangible beings—almost too exotic for most people (and professionals) to comprehend. Still, this lack of understanding doesn’t seem to slow down the relentless pursuit of the Holy Grail of consumer loyalty.

This is what I call “marketing machismo.”

But what fuels this “machismo”?

The answer lies within marketing itself.

It’s no coincidence that marketing—a so-called “lesser science” of economics—is the field most obsessed with brand loyalty. What’s ironic is that loyalty, the very thing marketing is so invested in, is fundamentally alien to the basic principles of its parent science, economics. The logic of free markets leaves little room for loyalty—or does it? (Kinneging, 2004)4

Let’s ask: what do marketers want?

That's fairly clear. They want us (a) consumers to remain attached to and continue choosing the products, brands, or parties they promote. The marketer’s question is: how do we get consumers to always drink Coca-Cola, buy the same laundry detergent, or drive the same brand of car?

Yet, this goes against the very essence of market logic.

Free markets function best without loyalty. According to economic logic, consumers choose the products or brands that best satisfy their needs—until they don’t. As soon as another brand or product offers equal or better value—perhaps at a lower price—it’s not only rational but desirable that consumer preferences shift toward the competitor. This is the essence of competition.

In such an “unfaithful” context, only a fanatic would talk about brand switching in terms like betrayal, conspiracy, or sacrilege. Deep down, we all know this—even if we only speak that way behind closed doors. But the fact that marketers don’t typically use these terms, even when loyalty is genuinely lacking, highlights a problem: we might be misusing the concept of loyalty altogether.

Loyalty makes sense only if betrayal is also a possibility (Spinoza: omnis determinatio est negatio). If the notion of betrayal has no place—because it’s irrelevant in economic or marketing terms—then neither does loyalty. In such a world ruled by free-market mechanisms, loyalty has no real home. In this sense, marketing’s use of the concept is simply perverse. Where loyalty exists, price mechanisms end (Kinneging, 2004).

In the consumer market, loyalty is essentially a bond between a person and a product. It reflects a tendency to repeatedly choose the same brand or product. But this is only a partial loyalty (secundum quid), not a complete one (simpliciter). To speak of a sacred bond between a consumer and their favorite product is absurd. Full loyalty refers to a bond that exists primarily between people.

We can only understand consumer loyalty in contrast to full loyalty. So instead of asking, “What is loyalty?” (a secondary question), we should ask, “What is the value of loyalty?”—and that might bring us closer to the truth.

Let’s look at the Hungarian market. Everyone complains about the lack of loyalty. People switch brands, shop in new places, constantly hunt for better deals (let’s not get into purchasing power), even buy cars in a higher price range. Is that bad?

Hungarians (like many in modern societies) have low trust—toward everything and everyone. A raw capitalist mindset prevails.

“People now worship money, banks pop up like mushrooms, and social status depends on your car, your girlfriend’s bust size, and how loud your stereo blasts.”5

Maybe our loyalty is indeed minimal, and our sense of community is weak. But something else has emerged: the individual's unprecedented freedom to do what they want, with whom they want. What we lose in trust and loyalty, we try to make up for with purchasing power (if only it matched Germany’s LoL). Everything is for sale, and we are buyers of everything. Who needs loyalty?

It's as if Hungary today (and not only Hungary) lives within Lyotard’s—or Deleuze and Guattari’s—“libidinal economy,” where desire is something to be harvested, stored, spent, squandered, or profitably invested.6 Our psychosexual energies feed the capitalist machine, which in turn makes a profit. In this economy, people make decisions—what to buy, sell, how to work—based on desire.

Postmodern philosophers argue that the West is in a libidinal twilight—a slow internal hemorrhage draining bodies and cities alike, leaving behind only relics and anaemic simulacra. Libido dissolves in all-consuming consumerism or spins endlessly in a vicious cycle. Unsurprisingly, in Lyotard’s model, the archetypal figure of this economy is the prostitute (Bennett, 2005).7

Project that onto our reality: Hungary began consumerizing in the 1980s, led privatization in the region, is a porn power, has high divorce rates—so how are we doing with loyalty?

The Ambulant Experts and the Resurrection of Loyalty

While the “mourners” are already burying loyalty, the “ambulance team” is working hard to revive it.

They argue that ego-centered consumerism—what we've dubbed libidinal consumer prostitution—is not the only way to see it. Humans are inherently social beings. We need community. Modernization stole this from us, replacing the “we” consciousness with an “I” consciousness. Loyalty declined because of that. But the “we” held richer relational meaning—and loyalty is inherently relational.

What we may have lost may be more valuable than what we gained in freedom—the freedom to do what we want (Kinneging, 2004).

We must acknowledge that marketing and the economic sphere are only small slices of society. Loyalty is also essential in families and citizenship. Without loyalty, neither families nor civil societies can flourish. Applying market categories to these spheres—while excluding loyalty—destroys institutions vital for a free, thriving society.

“Ambulant experts” approach loyalty from this relational, emotional side. They too recognize the machismo and knowledge gaps.

They say trust underpins loyalty—but what is trust? Parents build it with children. Newlyweds want it. Managers aim to build it in teams. Politicians try to measure it in institutions. Marketers? They want to quantify it.

Yet when we speak of loyalty, many consumers feel uncomfortable.8 The idea of being emotionally connected to a brand or company feels odd—like a weakness. It’s like admitting ads influence you (which few would).

Loyalty implies intimacy—more fitting between people, not companies. Still, in reality, consumers do develop loyalty toward companies and brands. They form emotional bonds and return again and again. They trust, rely, and find comfort in those brands. Brands become part of their identity.

What role does loyalty play in their lives? Many consumers long to develop roots. They return where they’re treated well. Loyalty reduces risk. It provides security. Hence, loyalty is emotional—just like relationships.

Yet most in marketing (including market research) don’t understand this. Businesses still define loyalty by behavior: number of purchases, spend, visits, etc. But this is really retention, not loyalty. They're related, but not the same.

Defining loyalty as behavior is easy—because it’s measurable. That’s why it persists. But it creates a false reality: a loyal-looking consumer may just be retained by convenience. True loyalty—especially emotional—is rare, long-lasting, and more meaningful.

Some researchers (e.g. Barnes, 2002) distinguish between functional and emotional loyalty. Functional loyalists like convenience: location, hours, stock, etc. Emotional loyalists feel welcomed, appreciated, recognized—they enjoy the experience.

They may behave similarly, but emotional loyalty is deeper and more durable. In Hungary, if any loyalty exists, it's likely functional—because that’s what we can measure.

So the real question is: what drives emotional loyalty?

Firms must dig deeper into consumer psychology. Marketing built an ivory-tower version of loyalty—brittle, commodified. Now, it must return to the real, human level: relationships, emotions, authenticity.

So, what causes emotional loyalty?

For now, it's difficult to give a precise answer. Perhaps that's why consumer researchers haven’t pursued this question too deeply—yet. What's certain is that if we want to understand the why behind consumer loyalty (rather than just the what or the how much), we must go beyond the logic of traditional marketing.

We need to grasp what kind of emotional bonds—conscious or subconscious—keep people connected to a store, a service provider, or a product. Emotional loyalty is difficult to describe and even harder to measure. Yet we know it exists. It’s based on positive memories, comfort, perceived personal value, meaningful experiences, and often a human connection with the brand.

This means the future of loyalty research lies not in quantitative metrics alone, but in psychological and sociological insights. In understanding how experiences, relationships, and identity shape buying habits and long-term preferences. And in appreciating that what we used to call “irrational” or “subjective” behavior might be the most human of all.

The Changing Face of Loyalty — A Summary

So, let’s sum up what we’ve learned.

Loyalty, in its original form, is disappearing. The mechanical, transactional version (buy X times = loyal) is no longer enough.
This is often blamed on consumers—but in reality, marketers also share the blame. By clinging to outdated models, we’ve misunderstood what loyalty really is.
The “macho” approach in marketing wanted control, predictability, dominance over consumer behavior. But in doing so, it ignored the fluidity, vulnerability, and emotionality of human relationships.
The “ambulant” approach—though still emerging—seeks to reclaim this. It treats consumers not as data points, but as people with desires, fears, and values.
In a world flooded with choices, true loyalty is rare and precious. And it can only be built where there is trust, recognition, and emotional connection.

Maybe loyalty never disappeared—it just evolved. Into something more human. Into something that can’t be bought, only earned.

The Third Path: Short‑Term Branding for Loyalty

Both the “mourning women” and the “ambulant experts” recognize that in recent years consumers have become increasingly open to new brands, effectively swapping brand loyalty for brand variety—a trend that jeopardizes long‑term brand survival.

This third path proposes a pragmatic and opportunistic strategy to address loyalty decline: marketers need to supplement traditional long‑term brand building with new tools, such as systematically creating and managing Short‑Term Brands (STBs) (Herman, 2002).9

Traditional brand theory suggests building brands for the long haul, where brand equity emerges—directly or indirectly—from consumer loyalty. But if loyalty is weakening, as some argue, this model may no longer suffice. Dan Herman (2002) explains that loyalty is diminishing because consumers continuously move on to new products and brands. The diffusion of new brands is accelerating, making brand launches easier than ever before. This trend is rooted in 20th‑century cultural, psychological, and social processes. Today’s consumers are overwhelmed with choices, driven by ambition to try, exhaust, and consume new experiences. This ambition is propelled by the Fear of Missing Out (FoMo) (Herman, 2002).

If we truly understand today’s consumers and their everyday reality, the limitations of current brand theory become clear—it does not address this new behavior. Therefore, brand theory, market research, and loyalty measurement all need radical reform.

Take children’s cartoons as an example: characters like Lilo and Stitch may last only a season or two now, unlike the longevity of Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. In the perfume industry, brands survive mere seasons compared to legacy names like Chanel No. 5 or Poison. This fast‑paced lifecycle occurs across fashion, food, cosmetics, toys, entertainment, music, travel, fitness, technology, pharmaceuticals, and even management theory. Consumers today behave fundamentally differently than previous generations (Herman, 2002).

Herman argues that short‑term strategies must involve STBs, because Long‑Term Brands (LTBs) can no longer meet modern needs—especially the psychological and social benefits consumers seek. LTBs cater to the desire for stability, continuity, and security, while STBs address the longing for novelty, emotional arousal, intellectual stimulation, and sensual experience. STBs can be used independently or in tandem with LTBs. According to Herman (2002), STBs offer a new path to consumer loyalty through FoMo‑driven engagement. A continuous stream of new STBs (paired with LTBs) can maintain consumer excitement, continually surprising, thrilling, and spoiling them. Managing successful STBs profitably requires a new mindset and practice across every business domain—organizational structure, workflows, HR and culture, R&D, IT, production, logistics, finance, and of course, marketing (Herman, 2002).

Conclusion

The field of consumer loyalty generates intense interest in marketing circles. Today it is apparent to everyone that something is wrong with loyalty. The systems we rely on are simply no longer delivering—something isn't working as expected.

Several factors contribute to this issue:

Consumers are becoming less loyal. Libidos decide, desires arise quickly, and instant gratification is expected. Consumers are “prostituting” themselves in the marketplace, and the system benefits—sometimes at marketers’ expense.
We sense intuitively that technological progress and innovation do not inherently foster loyalty; rather, they can facilitate infidelity among consumers. Companies crave loyalty but continue to rely on outdated retention strategies that no longer resonate.
The “mourning professionals” argue that marketers have been chasing a mirage all along. They believe loyalty may have never truly existed or was long since lost to rampant consumerism.
The “ambulant experts” have not given up; instead, they are rebuilding loyalty from its ashes. They know old models no longer suffice, and they act quickly—identifying symptoms and administering immediate remediation. Their diagnostics show that defining loyalty based on behavioral patterns alone is insufficient. Marketing has forgotten the emotional human, the truly loyal consumer; market research is vital to reintroduce this understanding.
The “third path”, pragmatic as it is, calls for rewriting brand theory—and in this rewriting, market research should take the lead.

Whichever perspective one adopts, one point remains clear:

We must confront marketing machismo, peel away the layers of marketing from marketing itself, and redefine the concept of loyalty.

Behavioral metrics alone are, or never were, sufficient measures of loyalty (and beyond). We must shift toward a deeper understanding of emotional drivers.

Only then can a new form emerge—often called “symbiotic loyalty”10—in which consumer trust is built through strong emotional connections, continuously nurtured.

From a business standpoint, this approach also enables better cost optimization—because companies will know when, where, and what to invest in loyalty—and when to disengage from unprofitable relationships.

Disagree? Good. I don’t write to be right—I write to be tested. Bring your Tenth Man view, your sharpest counterpoint, or even a quiet doubt—so long as it builds on data & insights. The most useful critique is often the one that unsettles my own thinking.

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