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by Michael McCall, Ph.D., Clay Voorhees, Ph.D., and Roger Calantone, Ph.D.
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Building Customer
Loyalty:
Ten Guiding Principles for Designing an
Effective Customer Reward Program
by Michael McCall, Clay Voorhees, and Roger Calantone
Executive Summary
R
eward programs are incentives designed to create loyalty among customers and to provide
the best rewards to the best customers. These programs have proliferated in the hospitality
industry for nearly three decades, with little direct evidence that they actually build either
attitudinal or behavioral loyalty. While program implementation seems to have expanded
exponentially, the actual components and structure of any given program appears to be driven more by
what the competition is offering rather than demonstrated effectiveness. This report (1) identifies
program components that have been shown to be effective, and (2) offers a series of guiding principles
that hospitality and marketing managers should find useful in designing and modifying their reward
programs. Although there is no universal recipe for reward program success, the ten guiding principles
adduced in this report could assist managers in leading the conversation on how to make their programs
more effective. Key points include finding genuine ways to rewards guests, differentiating the loyalty
program from those of competitors, and continually reevaluating tier requirements to ensure continued
guest participation.
Michael McCall, Ph.D., is professor and chair of the department of marketing and law in the School of
Business at Ithaca College and a visiting scholar at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration
(mm114@cornell.edu). He has published over 40 articles in such journals as the Journal of Food Service
Business Research, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Journal of Applied Psychology, and
Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, and Cornell Hospitality
Quarterly.
Roger Calantone, Ph.D., the Eli Broad Professor of Business, is chair of the marketing department and is co-
director of the Institute for Entrepreneurship at the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University
(rogercal@msu.edu). His chief research interests include product design and development processes; decision
support; pricing and price perception; and economic impact. Among his many publications are articles in the
Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of World
Business, Journal of Business Logistics, and European Journal of Marketing. He has received numerous awards
for publishing excellence and for his conference presentations.
T
by Michael McCall, Clay Voorhees, and Roger Calantone
he concept of a customer loyalty program can be traced at least as far back as 1896 when
Sperry and Hutchinson launched its Green Stamp program. Under this program, Sperry
and Hutchinson sold green stamps to retailers that were then provided to customers as
a reward for their patronage. Customers could paste their stamps into books, and redeem
those filled books for a variety of products in the S&H Green Stamp catalog.1 The green stamp
phenomenon provided a clear demonstration of the potential of reward programs, as it created an
advantage for retailers that offered the stamps and created a risk for retailers that did not offer such a
program. Building on this basic concept of customer rewards, American Airlines launched the first
contemporary hospitality industry customer reward program in 1981.2 Soon after, numerous hospitality
and retail firms followed suit and developed rewards programs focused on rewarding their best
customers, with the goals of securing their loyalty.
1 History of Loyalty Programs, FrequentFlier, http://frequentflier.com/ffp-005.htm (as viewed February 3, 2008).
2 American Airlines AAdvantage Program Details, AAdvantage, www.aa.com (viewed May 23, 2010).
Loyalty is more than repeat purchases, and programs must evolve to foster a deeper emotional connection
between the customer and firms.
Programs should ffer rewards that simultaneously provide high value to the consumer and carry low internal
costs.
Marketers can take use the potential of the loyalty program to capture data on your consumers that can be used
to better meet their needs.
Rather than simply adopting tier structures based loosely on precious metals, managers should revisit their
programs and segment based on actual spending, engagement, and consumer profiles.
Because consumers crave variety, programs can develop two-way partnerships, and thereby increase their value
to consumers.
Another type of partnership involves more collaboration with academic researchers armed with an array of
statistical tools, psychological and economic theories, intellectual curiousity, and the time to take a deep dive
into emerging research questions on loyalty program management.
Managers need to develop switching barriers to keep program members loyal to the organization as they clear
spending hurdles for tier membership. One mechanism for this is to offer smaller and potentially spontaneous
rewards between the major tier milestones to encourage continued customer loyalty and deter switching.
Consumers love choice and control, and so programs can offer a relatively broad set of rewards, based on
consumers' desires. Programs can also give members flexibility in their redemption intervals and choices.
Just as marketing managers would never blindly copy the marketing mix of their competition, loyalty managers
must strive to develop points of differentiation associated with their program and then properly position their
programs against the competition.
By focusing only on future discounts, programs may inadvertently convert loyal customers to price-sensitive
ones. Thus programs should disguise or downplay price-related benefits.
Programs should take full advantage of mobile devices to offer rewards. Products like FourSquare and other
PDA-enabled programs offer the potential to reward consumers in real time for their rewards and the
implications for creative program managers are limitless.
a simple portfolio of partners that provide maximum value 9 J.C. Nunes and X. Dreze, The Endowed Progress Effect: How Artificial
to their customers. The partnerships should strike a balance Advancement Increases Effort, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 32, No.
4 (2006), pp. 504-512.
10 A. Smith and L. Sparks, Its Nice to Get a Wee Treat If Youve Had 11 S.M.J. Van Osselaer, J.W. Alba, and P. Manchanada, Irrelevant
a Bad Week; Consumer Motivations in Retail Loyalty Scheme Points Information and Mediated Intertemporal Choice, Journal of Consumer
Redemption, Journal of Business Research (2008). Psychology, No. 14 (2004), pp. 257-270.
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Vol 9, No. 3 Compendium 2009
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www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/
by Wayne J. Taylor and Sheryl E. Kimes, Jin-Young Kim and Linda Canina, Ph.D.
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Restaurant Table Characteristics and Guest for Everyone: Determining Employee Time-based Restaurant Revenues Using
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and Sheryl E. Kimes, Ph.D. Zahn and Michael C. Sturman, Ph.D. M. Thompson, Ph.D., and Heeju (Louise)
Sohn
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Carroll, Ph.D., and Michael C. Sturman, Friedman, Ph.D., Leigh Anne Liu, Ph.D., Implications for Service Quality, by
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No. 3 Restaurants at the Crossroads: A Food and Beverage Outlets, by Gary M. Vol. 8, No. 7 Complaint Communication:
State By State Summary of Key Wage-and- Thompson, Ph.D., and Erica D. Killam How Complaint Severity and Service
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and David Sherwyn, J.D., and Martha Networks in U.S. Hotels, by Josh Ogle,
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Claims Does Not Mean the Sky Is Falling, Today and Tomorrow, by Sheryl E. Kimes, Sean A. Way, Ph.D.
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Gilman, J.D. Vol. 8, No. 5 Optimizing a Personal Wine
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2009 Tools Every Day: The Countervailing Effects of Steven A. Mutkoski, Ph.D.
Renovations and Obsolescence on Hotel
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Double Jeopardy in Marketing: The
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Chris Anderson, Ph.D., Michael Dixon, Wine Ratings, 19702005: Implications for Cathy A. Enz, Ph.D.
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in Public Hotel Companies: Recent Past,
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