Just before holiday break, an article in Smartbrief caught my eye. In Smartbrief’s version of the title, it was called “Integrity is Less Expensive Than the Alternative “. The link led to a strategy+business article titled “Integrity is Free “. On the one hand, you would think that the Smartbrief version comes across as less powerful than the strategy+business one. But the concept embodied in “less expensive than the alternative ” is going to be much more important to retail in 2015, I believe. Here’s why.

The s+b article, by Elizabeth Doty, played on the concept first embodied by Philip Crosby’s book, Quality is Free: The Art of Making Quality Certain. He made the argument that it’s more cost-effective to do it right the first time than it is to deal with the consequences of not making quality a priority. Ms. Doty makes the same argument about integrity. My favorite quote: “Acting with integrity prevents the unintended ‘costs of compromise,’ such as damaged reputation, stress, and added complexity, which are detrimental to companies but often hidden from view. Honesty and transparency make things simpler. When you have the courage to own your values and make clear commitments and keep them, employees, partners, suppliers, and customers are more likely to commit and engage, as well. “

She presents her argument in a very Harvard Business Review kind of way: that companies with high integrity cultures are better performers in the market. And that integrity is about leadership commitments to deliver results instead of to manage expectations. But I think that in retail, and in most consumer-facing industries, integrity is going to be applied – forcefully – to the brand promise made to the consumer, and to the company promises made to front-line employees, particularly store associates.

Let’s start with store associates first. 2014 was already a year of intense focus on minimum wage, with retail right in the spotlight. Between protest marches that centered on McDonald’s, and Walmart’s announcement that it would give raises to minimum wage employees across the board starting this year, not to mention the national debate over raising the minimum wage and what makes for a “livable wage, ” there already was plenty of focus on the store associate.

That’s not going to change. Retailers know that the store as it exists today is not going to be the vehicle that carries bricks & mortar retailing into the future. That’s already a painful discussion, and we haven’t even touched on the even more painful question of what a store associate’s role will be in that new future store.

It is a very rare store environment that operates with integrity. With capital-I Integrity. That sounds harsh, but I’ve seen too much to be convinced otherwise. I’ve lived it – I’ve seen the scheduling practices that treat store employees as cardboard cutouts that can be stood behind a cash register, with no regard for reasonable hours or enough hours to “make a living. ” I’ve seen complete lack of training, a “throw them to the wolves ” mentality when it comes to equipping store employees for success. I’ve seen management’s complete certainty that employees are only there to rip them off, and in the same company, employees’ bitter certainty that their employer cares for them less than the office furniture at corporate.

That culture directly impacts the brand promise to the customer. I started my first day back to work in 2015 with this picture, shared by Paula. Which, of course, got picked up in the media right away. Not to mention the trending hashtag on Twitter. When your store associates are more social-media savvy than your company, things like Doty’s “damaged reputation ” and other costs of compromise are no longer hidden from view. They are front and center for everyone to see.

I felt this dissonance as a consumer most strongly at the tail end of 2014. You see, I live in Denver, and that means that if I want to get anywhere by plane, it pretty much is going to be on United Airlines. You may have noticed that they’re running these new ads – playing with their relaunched “Friendly Skies ” tagline. They’re also running a new on-plane safety video.

As a consumer, it definitely took awhile for these messages to sink in. I don’t think I really noticed them until late October or early November. And my immediate reaction was, “Wow, wouldn’t it be nice if flying on United was actually like that? ” I mean, sure the in-flight video is cute and it is an entertaining distraction that might actually get more people to watch the video (if we weren’t all quoting along with it verbatim already while frantically finishing that last email before we get caught with the cellular radio still on).

But it also underscores how much it sucks to be on a modern-day airplane. My most jarring moment comes at 3:46 in the video above, when they cut to a guy in a t-shirt and swim trunks, sitting in a row of airplane seats on the beach, sipping some presumably alcoholic beverage with an umbrella in it. The first time I saw that video, I was sitting in a window seat in Economy Plus (about the only thing my Gold status is worth these days), where I was contemplating yet another $7 snack box while studiously not bumping elbows with the guy next to me, and also judging whether the person in the seat in front of me was one of those seat-recliner types that might try to crush my laptop later in the flight. Mentally, I was so far away from the image portrayed by that video that I started laughing. I mean, that drink the swim-trunks guy is holding had to have cost him at least $14 in alcohol. And even in a bulkhead seat in Economy Plus, there would be no way he could sprawl in the chair like that. There’s just no room.

As a consumer, I’ve come to the conclusion that United just doesn’t care about me. They wouldn’t notice if I stopped flying them tomorrow. They don’t notice when they treat me badly – even when I go to the time and effort to tell them so in one of their “how was your flight ” surveys. Don’t get me started on the time they ditched me in Salt Lake City with no luggage.

They. Don’t. Care. About. Me.

They’ve already told me so in so many ways, from the $7 half-frozen food and warm soft drinks (how do you even do that?), from the baggage fees, the $200 flight change fees, the change in how mileage points will be accrued, the inches they keep trimming away from the seats – the seat padding, the leg room, the elbow room, the storage pockets, the under-seat storage. A few clever ads or videos will in no way convince me that they are friendly, or, even more importantly, that they care about me or continue to want me as a customer. Right now, all I do is laugh and shake my head. But in the back of my mind, I see a parody coming on – one that shows a side-by-side comparison of the rosy view that United presents right next to the cold, cruel reality that is what flying their airline is really like. I’m sure someone’s already done it and it’s only a Google search away.

Starting in 2009, I spent a lot of time telling retailers – anyone in retail who would listen, really – that brands need to care about their customers, and retail brands especially. Really care, not just fake it. You can no longer win in retail by selling the same things that everybody else does. Why do I need to go to your store when I can buy it online? Why do I need to pay more for what you offer when it doesn’t meet my needs any more than the lowest cost version does?

My prediction for 2015: this concept is going to come home to roost. Companies can no longer hide or bury the reputation damage that comes from a lack of integrity, and nowhere is this more true than when it comes to brand integrity – the promises that brands make to their customers. Especially retail brands, because really, what else do you have to offer when I can get everything you sell cheaper and with less hassle on Amazon?

It’s just way too easy to publicly humiliate the companies that are more concerned about the perception of reality than they are about reality. And it gets easier and easier as a consumer to identify those companies – and avoid them.

But what about United? You would be right to ask. Because of course, I have no choice and they know it. If you live in Denver, your choices are United, Frontier, and Southwest. I can take Southwest to vacation cities like Las Vegas and Orlando. I won’t even talk about Frontier. Anywhere else and it’s United. And sure, I’m stuck. They can bank on a certain amount of my business, for now. But I guarantee that a customer service strategy of “Yeah? Well what else are you going to do? ” is not a long-term strategy. Someone else will either come in and steal your customers (Virgin! Please come to Denver!), or as soon as your customers move to a city with more choices, you lose. And in that situation, there is no amount of advertising, apologizing, bribing, or otherwise that will bring them back.

Which is why Integrity is much less expensive than the alternative.