Competing with loyalty: How to design successful customer loyalty reward programs

For industries with low switching costs, customer loyalty programs (LPs) have potential to drive differentiation and sustain a competitive advantage. However, incentives provided through LPs also have a potential to escalate into costly price wars. In this article, we discuss how to design successful customer loyalty reward programs that bring value to participants and that cannot be emulated by competitors easily. We focus on three distinct aspects of improvement: personalization, reward types, and additional services. Through personalization, companies can leverage the knowledge they already have on their customers to tailor offers that they find relevant and appealing. For the reward structure, we argue in favor of a certain degree of opacity. We also encourage loyalty programs to consider giveaways that are unique and difficult to imitate and to use all the information they have available to provide rewards that fit with each customers’ idiosyncratic situation or preference. Finally, competitive LPs should look beyond offers and rewards. In addition to purchases, LPs can reward participants for other desirable behaviors; they can also provide additional services that impose minimal costs on firms, but bring value to customers.