Mind the gap: Why what a brand promises and what it delivers matters

Fiona Moss

Organisations make promises to consumers every day, but how often is the experience failing to match these promises, and what happens when there is a mismatch between promise and experience?
  • When consumers who said an experience was worse than promised were asked how they felt about it, 34% reported feeling misled, 28% not valued and 28% (again) upset, while 17% explicitly said they felt treated unfairly.
  • Customers who say that the promise and the experience are aligned are significantly more likely than their counterparts to agree that the brand delivered on "reliability" and "trust".
  • When it comes to ensuring positive business outcomes in the form of happy and loyal customers, getting the promise and the experience to resonate with one another is central to success....

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