Last year, Starbucks’ business in Japan was booming. The company was making strong profits and rapidly expanding. But then things took a turn for the worse. Store sales tumbled 17% and it appeared people were going off the brand.

Analysts said the company was suffering from brand fatigue. Its attempt to make its coffee shops present on every Japanese high street was turning their customers against them.

“Starbucks is cannibalising its own success with too many stores,” wrote Bloomberg columnist William Pesek Jr.

Brand fatigue can strike even the most successful companies. In the past few years leading companies including Nike, Nokia and Kodak have all seen customers turning against them. But there are measures brands can take to avoid falling out with their customers.

One thing that is crucial is to know your target group inside out in order to understand and act on changes in their attitudes. Brands can become blinded by their success, so they don’t notice changes in their customers’ habits. By failing to respond to these shifts, they damage their relationships.

“I am always irritated by the quick lube or express oil change service units who religiously send me a coupon to change the oil in my car every three months,” says John Vidmar, Global Director of Performance Tracking at Synovate. “After going to one particular location for almost ten years, it surprises me that they have not figured out that my driving habits changed radically five years ago.”

Vidmar says companies should approach customer relationships the same way as marriages. Just as in a marriage you would expect your partner to learn about you and evolve with you, customers expect brands to gather information and use this to serve them better.

Amazon is a company that does this successfully. The website records what customers look at and buy, then uses this to offer individual recommendations. In doing so, it builds a strong relationship with the customer that encourages them to stay with the brand.

Other lessons from marriages can also be applied to customer relations, Vidmar says. In a lasting marriage both members consider how their actions affect each other. Similarly, brands need to ask whether what they are doing is really good for customers. Companies often do what they think is best while neglecting the customer’s actual desires.

“Our mistake at times is overlaying our view of what the customer needs,” Vidmar says.

This can quickly cause brand fatigue. Last year, Facebook introduced face recognition software that it believed met desires for easier tagging. Instead the release fuelled concerns about invasion of privacy and stirred up customer dissatisfaction.  Facebook’s values of openness and transparency clashed with the values of some customers.

Marriages that last, Vidmar observes, tend to be those with a high-degree of compatibility – where the couple’s values fit. In the same way, companies can keep good relations with their customers by making sure their values match up.

“When looking for a marriage partner we ask ourselves all kinds of questions. Do we have the same values? Are we compatible?” Vidmar says. “Markets are no different.” 

When establishing itself, the supermarket chain Wal-mart adopted a ‘Made In America’ policy – with local goods and staff – to fit in with the conservative values of its rural locations. Its compatibility helped it to build a strong bond with customers.

However, when brands present values that are at odds with their target market, customers can lose faith. Back in 1996, McDonald’s attempted to present a more up-market and adult identity with its ‘Deluxe’ range, but when these values didn’t fit with those of its customers, the product failed.

Falling out with customers like this is a danger all brands face, but they can guard against it by closely monitoring customer relationships. “We have to evolve to use the information we gather about our customers to better serve them, to customise our services so that they value what we provide more,” says Vidmar. “Ask what the customer gets out of working with you, why they stay with you and what they hope to get out of you in the future and ask yourself the same. Answering those questions will put you well on the way to building relationships which will sustain your business.”

Read John Vidmar’s paper: Building Strong Customer Relationships: 7 Questions Every Leader Should Consider