Rethinking Brand Loyalty Across Generations
Debates about brand loyalty across generations have been ongoing for years. During my senior year of college, I wrote a paper titled, “Why Brand Loyalty Will Die With The Baby Boomers.” It drew on various studies showing how Baby Boomers were extremely loyal to their household brands, while younger generations were not. At that time, Millennials—my generation—were still in their 20s, and advertisers were particularly interested in the 25-34 age demographic. The belief was that capturing these individuals during significant life events would make them lifelong customers. When it became apparent that Millennials were less brand loyal than their Baby Boomer parents, many brands scrambled to adjust. A popular narrative emerged: younger buyers craved deeper connections with brands, preferred companies that stood for specific (often progressive) values, and wanted open dialogues through social media. While there might be some truth to these claims, it often feels like the sort of thing an agency creative director might pitch to a boardroom full of aging executives—disconnected from the realities of most buying decisions. Today, we hear the same narrative about Gen Z. Countless articles and marketing conference presentations proclaim that Gen Z is fundamentally different from previous generations. But if you swap 'Millennials want to have an open dialogue with brands through Twitter' for 'Gen Z is only buying products on TikTok shops,' it becomes clear that we’ve heard this story before. I’m not denying that these trends exist, but rather than over-indexing on specific tactics—like TikTok shops—it’s crucial to understand the larger context of consumer behavior. If we accept that most consumers are satisficers—that repeat purchasing is often about habit and convenience rather than emotional connection—we might look at generational loyalty in a new light. Could it be that older generations simply lack the time, energy, or bandwidth to constantly explore new options? Is it possible that as people get married, have kids, and face a growing number of daily decisions, they become more likely to satisfice?
Evidence of Changing Loyalty Patterns
There is research to support this theory. A 2024 study by Morning Consult found that nearly half of Millennials surveyed reported being more loyal to brands than they were five years ago. As a Millennial myself, I can relate. Just living with my spouse has made us habitually loyal to certain brands My wife and I recently questioned why we buy Colgate toothpaste. When I was single, I bought Crest, but somewhere along the way, I remember my wife saying she “hated the taste of Crest.” To me, toothpaste is just toothpaste, so I switched to Colgate, and it stuck. She now claims she never made that comment, implying I was the one who preferred Colgate (for the record, she definitely did). In the end, it doesn’t really matter; we still buy Colgate. And when we travel, we buy travel-sized Crest because that’s what Target sells in their travel section. Speaking of Target, I shop at Target because my wife shops at Target. If I buy something that might need to be returned, I choose Target because I assume she’ll have returns too, so we can make a joint trip. We can go together, and plan to do so on a day we visit my parents—there’s a Target on the way to their house. For us, it’s more about ease than brand loyalty. We both work fulltime jobs. We have a dog, and at the time of writing this, our first child on the way. We don’t have the time or energy to carefully consider every purchase decision. When we order takeout, we usually pick from the same three restaurants. Better options probably exist, but why take the risk?
The U-Shaped Curve of Loyalty
But don’t just take my word for it. A study published in the Journal of Marketing Analytics by University of Amsterdam professor Dirk Sikkel, titled “Brand Relations and Life Course: Why Old Consumers Love Their Brands,” found that brand loyalty follows a U-shaped curve across a consumer’s life. Younger consumers show declining brand loyalty from their teenage years through their 40s, after which they gradually become more loyal over time.