Is there such a thing as brand loyalty with today's social media?

After reading The Most Powerful Brand Ambassadors In The World May Not Be Brand Loyal from Social Media Today by Steven Olenski, it seems that brand loyalty is a thing of the past.

What caused this? Experts say things such as too many brand options available to choose from, the recession, and, of course, social media like apps that offer real-time coupons. My opinion is that today's consumer is becoming more intelligent about their spending habits, mostly due to all of the information that is available to us.

When I'm planning my menu for the upcoming week and making my grocery store list, I immediately go to Pinterest to find some good recipes. I then make a list of everything I need from the grocery store, and then research online what stores offer the products I need at the lowest price. From there, I print coupons that I find on stores' websites, coupon websites, and coupon apps on my phone for the products and stores that I need. As a college student with a very limited budget and three grocery stores within a mile of my apartment, I take full advantage of this. There have been times when I have saved up to $30 on my weekly grocery list, and I'm not even considered an "extreme couponer" who spent hours looking up deals!

When I'm looking up all of this information, I rarely pay special attention to the brands that I find coupons for. If a recipe calls for chicken that I find on Tyson's website, I may end up buying an entirely different brand simply because it was cheaper. If I need cheese to put on my sandwiches for the week, I'm not going to buy Kraft simply because my mother always bought it. I buy the cheapest brand (with or without coupons) that meets my personal quality standard (which at this time in my life, is rather minimal).

As a marketing major, I've learned in many of my marketing classes that there are different levels of customers ranging from those that aren't even aware of your brand to those that are loyal and always buy your product when they need it. I'm starting to believe that loyal customers are a dying breed. Even my own mother is starting to buy different brands that she's never bought before, simply because of price. Because of this change in consumer habits, marketers are going to have to find more unique ways to increase their returning customers without sacrificing profit. This cannot simply be done by posting a coupon a Facebook, but rather engaging customers in a more creative way via social media (since contacting them one-on-one would greatly increase costs) in order to create their own brand community.