In an intensely competitive environment, it becomes very crucial for any organization to maintain and enhance professional relations with its customers. This will help the organization in retaining and generating loyalty amongst its customers. However, considering the number of competitors and the huge product assortment, it is very difficult to create loyal customers in today’s time. One good strategy to gain a set of loyal customers is by building a brand that is perceived as ethical by the customers. An ethical brand can assist an organization to gain the trust, love and confidence of the customers which in turn will make the latter more loyal towards the brand and will also help the organization in earning higher profits.

Today, the Indian customers are more empowered than ever before. The rising competition, pricing wars, huge product assortments, entry of many national and international players, etc. have provided the customers with a lot of options to choose from. Today, the customers can screen their brands on the basis of minute parameters. For instance, many of us prefer going to a brand that provides a high level of service as compared to a brand where the level of service is mediocre. A major issue of debate today is whether there exists some kind of brand loyalty amongst the customers or not. Well, according to me, the answer is pretty simple. Yes, there exists loyalty but only if the loyalty factor is present on both the sides i.e., the organization and the customer. It is very unfortunate that today many organizations, in the greed of maximizing their sales, deceive the customers and indulge in activities that are considered as unethical from the point of view of business. If the customer feels cheated then, he is most likely to shift the brand. The organizations should realize that if they are deceiving the customers then the customers will not stay with them for a long period of time. It will be more of transactional marketing rather than relationship marketing wherein we are selling only to generate higher revenues in the present rather than focusing on nurturing strong relationships to stay profitable in the present and in the future.

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