Though these numbers speak for themselves, corporations and advertisers have been slow to make the proper investments in a consumer group whose loyalty takes time to earn.

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Groupe Aeroplan then made two big acquisitions: Loyalty Management Group (LMG) and Carlson Marketing.

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There was one group that did show loyalty to its smartphone brand: iPhone owners, who overwhelmingly (77%) said they preferred the iPad over the Kindle Fire (8%) and Galaxy Tab (5%).

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Nor, we see, is loyalty to the group sacrosanct.

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These gamers also took the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (you can take the self-scorable test, here) to evaluate their psychological foundations of morality, such as whether they value loyalty to a group or whether they respect authority.

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"This performance demonstrates the strength of our brand and the loyalty of our customers, " said the group's chief executive Julian Dunkerton.

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Perhaps more so for the Apples and the Googles and the Amazons of the group, who are looking for emotional engagement to fill out the brand loyalty equation and attendant profit streams to fit their own mobile product lines.

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But, after studying a high-tech corporate-services provider, a French grocery group, a German broking house and an American mail-order company, the authors found little correlation between loyalty and profitability.

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