there are certainly many advantages to inducting your own brand into cult-like status, some of which add to company image, whereas others simply boost sales and revenue across the board. well known advantages of having cult-like followers include perks such as: a loyal customer-base, low price sensitivity, improved competitiveness, and snowball advertising (thompson, scott a. and rajiv k. sinha, 2008). a loyal customer base means that through ‘thick and thin’, the consumer will stay by your side. a good example of this is when nike, although being found out for exploiting cheap child labour in the nike owned sweatshops, maintains a fanatical following from their loyal customer base. another advantage previously mentioned is low price sensitivity. this means that consumers aren’t as conscious as to the price they are paying for their worshipped brand's goods. the consumers are able to pay more in a guilt-free manner without the need to shop for a cheaper and/or better alternative i.e. an elastic demand. the third mentioned advantage was that of the ‘improved competitiveness’ category. this means that as a result of a fanatical, loyal following, consumers see no real competition or substitute for their chosen brand/s. linking back to low price sensitivity, consumers are willing to pay any price for the product and as a result, the companies do not partake in any sort of price war with competitors. the fourth and final mentioned advantage is ‘snowball advertising’. here snowball advertising means that loyal customers spread word of praise for their chosen brand/s. linking back to a “cultist recruitment stage” companies are able to let consumers broaden their demographic as people who hear positive word about a product are likely to go through at least one of the three cultist brand stages (thompson, scott a. and rajiv k. sinha, 2008).