Every business owner wants to cultivate a loyal customer base and avoid toxic relationships. But B.J. Bueno, founder and managing partner of The Cult Branding Company in Orlando, says doing so is not easy; it requires disciplined brand management and employee buy-in. He spoke recently with Smart Answers columnist Karen E. Klein about strategies that entrepreneurs with limited resources can employ to cope with brand fanatics and brand detractors. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow.

Karen E. Klein: What causes customers either to fall in love with a small business or to hate it?

B.J. Bueno: Feeling is the beginning. A transactional customer looks for cheaper prices. He is thinking when he is shopping—as opposed to being guided by his feelings. If your product is a commodity, for your customers, it will be like going to the supermarket.

Most small businesses can’t afford to compete on the commodity level. They want customers who become brand believers. Now you’re in a different realm, where the consumer feels first and thinks later.

Angry customers can become aggressive about spreading bad faith through word of mouth or online. What triggers someone to act out a vendetta against a small business?

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FedEx Office (formerly FedEx Kinko’s), an operating company of FedEx Corp. /quotes/comstock/13*!fdx/quotes/nls/fdx (FDX 89.25, -0.12, -0.13%) , today released the results of its third annual Signs of the Times national small business survey, just ahead of National Small Business Week. The study found that small business owners are eager to lead the charge out of the country’s protracted recession — with almost three-quarters (72 percent) saying they will be the driving force behind the U.S. economic recovery in 2010. In fact, 51 percent of the small business owners polled say their businesses have already or will fully recover by the end of this year.

This optimism is a marked improvement over the survey’s findings last year, when 54 percent of respondents indicated they were very concerned about the economy’s impact on their business. Further evidence of this brighter outlook is that 18 percent of small businesses are considering an increased budget for staffing and HR activities in 2010, up from just 9 percent last year.

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