Aishwarya Badan: Why market dominance can’t buy a good reputation

Market leadership is often mistaken for market immunity. When a brand commands scale, reach, and habitual consumer dependence, communication lapses are frequently rationalized as tolerable, temporary, or commercially inconsequential. History shows otherwise.

Crisis communication fundamentals do not lose relevance with market share. In fact, the higher the dominance, the greater the long-term cost of neglecting them.

India’s aviation sector offers a useful lens to examine this dynamic.

The Comfort of Scale

In December 2025, India’s largest airline faced widespread operational disruption, cascading delays, cancellations, stranded passengers, and visible public frustration across digital and traditional media. The response eventually arrived: leadership messaging, refunds, waivers, and a recovery roadmap.

What stood out was not the presence of these measures, but their timing.

For days, consumer narratives ran ahead of official communication. Passenger sentiment hardened before reassurance entered the conversation. By the time empathy was expressed, trust had already been strained. This pattern wasn’t unprecedented. Similar communication delays had surfaced during earlier public crises as well. Yet commercially, the airline remained largely insulated. Market share stayed intact. Demand returned. Competitors struggled to absorb displaced passengers at scale.

This insulation creates a dangerous illusion: that communication basics are optional when alternatives are limited.

Why Fundamentals Still Matter

Crisis communication frameworks across industries consistently emphasize a few non negotiables: early acknowledgement, visible empathy, clarity over defensiveness, and leadership presence. These are not aesthetic choices. They are trust-preservation mechanisms.

When brands delay these steps, they may still survive the immediate crisis, especially in categories with high switching friction or limited substitutes. But survival should not be mistaken for strength.

Each delayed response subtly reshapes consumer expectation. Customers learn not to expect reassurance. Silence becomes familiar. Emotional distance normalizes.

Over time, this erodes not awareness or usage, but affinity.

The Hidden Cost of Emotional Erosion

Market leaders often rely on structural advantages: network scale, pricing power, distribution reach, or operational efficiency. These factors protect volume. What they don’t protect is emotional loyalty.

Repeated low-empathy responses gradually reposition a brand from “trusted” to merely “tolerated.” Consumers continue to transact, but with lowered emotional commitment. The relationship becomes functional, not preferential.

This distinction matters most when conditions change.

As capacity expands, new entrants stabilize, and alternatives become viable, consumers don’t reassess brands from a blank slate. They draw on accumulated memory of how they were treated when things went wrong.

At that point, operational parity combined with emotional deficit becomes a competitive liability. Why Dominant Brands Fall into This Trap

This pattern isn’t unique to aviation. It appears across telecom, banking, mobility, and digital platforms.

Dominant players internalize a feedback loop: Crises occur -> Communication lags -> Outrage spikes -> Usage returns -> Market share holds

Over time, leadership teams conclude, often unconsciously, that speed of empathy is negotiable. Communication becomes reactive rather than instinctive. Operational recovery is prioritized, while reassurance is treated as secondary.

This isn’t arrogance. It’s conditioning.

But markets don’t stay static.

When Alternatives Arrive

Consumer behavior changes slowly, until it doesn’t.

The moment viable alternatives scale, emotional history suddenly matters. Brands that underinvested in trust during periods of dominance find themselves disadvantaged not because of price or product, but because they lack goodwill reserves.

At that stage, communication cannot be “caught up.” Trust debt doesn’t disappear with better press releases. It surfaces precisely when the brand needs flexibility most.

We’ve seen this repeatedly across sectors: leaders who dominated categories for years only to discover that customers were waiting, quietly, for a reason to leave.

A Communication Lesson for Market Leaders

The lesson here is not that dominant brands should panic at every crisis, nor that all delays signal intent. It is simpler and more strategic:

Market share does not replace communication hygiene.

The basics such as early acknowledgement, empathy before explanation, leadership visibility, are not reputation luxuries. They are long-term risk controls.

Brands that treat them as optional during periods of insulation are effectively borrowing against future trust.

That loan always comes due.

Final Thought

Crisis communication is not tested when alternatives are scarce. It is tested when they arrive.

The brands that endure are not those that never stumble, but those that consistently show up, (early, human, and accountable) even when they don’t strictly have to.

Market dominance may buy time. It never buys absolution.

Aishwarya J Badan, comms professional