At the National Retail Federation (NRF) 2026, Sara Richter, chief marketing officer at SAP Emarsys, will unveil new insights from the SAP Emarsys Customer Loyalty Index (CLI) and Buyer Loyalty Index (BLI) that quantify a widening difference between stated loyalty and actual behaviour.
More than half (65 per cent) of consumers claim brand love, yet many drift away, while B2B buyers stay out of habit or because switching is too hard. AI turns “dark data” into connected, personalised experiences that win in the Engagement Era.
“Quiet quitting has come to retail, and its B2B counterpart is Default Loyalty. Both look like loyalty but are fragile. The reason? Internal complexity rather than a lack of intent. Every brand wants to engage better, but many are not yet able to do so,” Richter said.
“Enter “dark data”: the signals brands already collect but can’t activate because they’re trapped in disconnected systems across technology, service, marketing and revenue. It’s not lost or ignored, it’s unusable in real time without an intelligence layer. That’s why AI matters. AI connects those signals so brands can deliver personalised, connected experiences across every touchpoint, every time,” Richter added.
The Loyalty Gap in Numbers
More than half (65 per cent) say they “love and trust” a favourite brand, yet 62 per cent switch for a better price, 50 per cent leave after a poor experience, 29 per cent walk following a controversy and 9 per cent exit over sustainability concerns.
Customers rarely complain; they quietly disengage—opening fewer messages, purchasing less often, then switching.
Well over half (76 per cent) of buyers claim loyalty—yet 66 per cent of that is Default Loyalty: staying because switching is painful, not because the value is strong. When integration barriers fall or a superior offer appears, inertia evaporates.
Budgets are tight, expectations are higher, and journeys are fragmented. Despite oceans of data, over half of brands say their data is too unstructured to use, and a similar amount cannot act in real time. The result is faith‑based loyalty instead of evidence‑based engagement, because the signals that predict churn sit in silos.
“This is the essence of what has become known as the Engagement Era. Understanding how customers engage beyond transactions and using one intelligence layer to interpret signals across technology, service, marketing and revenue in real time. Traditional marketing platforms weren’t built for that,” Richter said.
Richter advises four actions for 2026: activate dark data, convert default to strategic loyalty, deliver connected experiences and build value-based engagement.
Activating dark data looks like unifying signals across technology, service, marketing and revenue to spot early disengagement (price sensitivity, friction, values clashes) before it becomes churn.
Convert default to strategic loyalty uses predictive analytics and AI‑driven personalisation to anticipate needs, scale relevance, and turn inertia into intentional commitment.
Delivering connected experiences eliminates fragmented touchpoints: one customer, one journey, one view.
Building value‑based engagement treats ESG and sustainability as procurement criteria; aligning proof points to the segments that care most.
The AI Advantage
Nearly one in three of B2B buyers say AI positively influences loyalty. Even as 36 per cent of consumers express data privacy concerns, brands that deploy transparent, ethical AI to power real‑time personalisation gain a measurable edge.
SAP will share more on how it is unifying engagement capabilities across the customer lifecycle later this year.
