Peets coffee is where I can be found most days of the week and on the weekends in the morning. I like Peets espresso.
I say that I am worth $1 billion to Peets.
Peets was recently sold to a German company for $1 billion.
What the German company was buying was the loyalty of millions of people like myself who are customers of Peets. Some of us are being sold at $1,000 apiece.... effectively.
While I am not personally worth $1 billion to Peets shareholders, I am a metonymic example of what the German company was buying.
Next time a company that is your loyal source is bought you can think of that purchase as a purchase of you. Your loyalty to a business is worth a great deal of money.
Such sales are relevant to marketing. Developing customer loyalty is what genuinely creates economic value for a company.
I recently learned that my book (with Salli Rasberry as coauthor) Marketing without Advertising, is one of the top three books on marketing in English in the history of publishing. My book makes it clear how loyalty can be created.