AMUL&ROYAL ENFIELD Indian Cult Brands

Every human being is born with a set of perpetual needs, the satisfaction of each of which leads to a higher level need. All these needs culminate at the most demanding need of self-actualization. If a product or brand fulfills this desire of a person, the customer becomes a core loyal to that brand/product. This serves as the basis for brand-cultism. Like religious cults that attract thousands of devoted disciples, certain brands have magnetic characteristics: They attract die-hard customers who become walking, talking and viral marketers. A Brand Cult may be defined as a phenomenon where customers display an unusually strong emotional involvement with a particular brand. Thus, lending the brand an exceptionally high degree of consumer loyalty, along with an amplified sense of owning the brand. As cultism in India with respect to brands is not highly pronounced, the primary aim of this paper is to look at few brands which can be considered as cult brands in the Indian context and analyze the reasons thereof, for attaining this status, in comparison to the global cult brands. Two Indian brands ‘Amul’ and ‘Royal Enfield Bullet’ are taken for the analysis. This study focuses on how Indian cult brands fit into the popular framework ‘Golden Rules of Cultism’ developed by Matthew W. Ragas