(such as vendor lock-in), a lack of viable alternatives, or out of convenience. Such loyalty is referred to as "spurious loyalty". Previous studies showed that customer loyalty is affected by customer satisfaction, but the association differs based on customer switching costs (procedural, relational, and financial). Real brand loyalty exists when customers have a high relative attitude toward the brand which they then exhibit through repurchase behavior. This type of loyalty can be a great asset to the firm: customers are willing to pay higher prices, they may cost less to serve, and can bring new customers to the firm. For example, if Joe has brand loyalty to Company A, he will purchase Company A's products even if Company B's are cheaper and/or of a higher quality. From the point of view of many marketers, loyalty to the brand — in terms of consumer usage — is a key factor. However, companies often ensure that they are not spending resources to retain loyal but unprofitable customers. Usage rate the 'rate' of usage, to which the Pareto 80-20 Rule applies: Kotler's "heavy users" are disproportionately important to the brand (typically, 20 percent of users accounting for 80 percent of usage — and of suppliers' profit). As a result, suppliers often segment their customers into "heavy", "medium", and "light" users; as far as they can, they target "heavy users". However, research shows that heavy users of a brand are not always the most profitable for a company. Loyalty A second dimension, is whether the customer is committed to the brand. Philip Kotler, again, defines four status of loyalty: Hard-core Loyals — who buy the brand all the time. Split Loyals — loyal to two or three brands. Shifting Loyals — moving from one brand to another. Switchers — with no loyalty (possibly "deal prone", constantly looking for bargains or "vanity prone", looking for something different). Again, research shows that customer commitment is a more nuanced a fine-grained construct than what was previously thought. Specifically, customer commitment has five dimensions, and some commitment dimensions (forced commitment may even negatively impact customer loyalty). Psychological reasoning A person's psychological disposition affects which brands they are attracted to. Cognitive responses can be matched with brand personalities. Brand personalities are broken down into five categories of traits: sincerity, ruggedness, competence, sophistication and excitement. Consumers are drawn to a brand because the brand strongly conveys one of these traits,