IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/joamsc/v47y2019i4d10.1007_s11747-019-00652-y.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effects of loyalty program introduction and design on short- and long-term sales and gross profits

Author

Listed:
  • Malika Chaudhuri

    (University of Dayton)

  • Clay M. Voorhees

    (University of Alabama)

  • Jonathan M. Beck

    (Michigan State University)

Abstract

Loyalty programs (LPs) are marketing investments designed to foster behavioral loyalty among a firm’s best customers and, ultimately, increase firm performance. Surprisingly, the effectiveness of introducing LPs on firm performance in the short and long term has not been thoroughly evaluated. This research examines the extent to which introducing an LP can increase both firm sales and gross profits. Leveraging data from 322 publicly-traded firms that introduced an LP between 2000 and 2015, the authors demonstrate that introducing an LP can increase sales and gross profits in the short term (within the first year), and these positive effects are sustained long term (for at least three years). However, the effects on gross profits do not become significant until the second quarter after LP introduction, and their overall impact on performance lags substantially behind sales. Complementing these primary findings, the results reveal that offering an LP with tiers or earning mechanisms can provide firms with significant increases in sales and gross profits. Taken together, this research demonstrates that introducing strategically designed LPs can dramatically increase firm performance in both the short and long term.

Suggested Citation

  • Malika Chaudhuri & Clay M. Voorhees & Jonathan M. Beck, 2019. "The effects of loyalty program introduction and design on short- and long-term sales and gross profits," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 640-658, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:joamsc:v:47:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s11747-019-00652-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s11747-019-00652-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11747-019-00652-y
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11747-019-00652-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wesley Hartmann & V. Viard, 2008. "Do frequency reward programs create switching costs? A dynamic structural analysis of demand in a reward program," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 109-137, June.
    2. Hui Feng & Neil A. Morgan & Lopo L. Rego, 2017. "Firm capabilities and growth: the moderating role of market conditions," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 76-92, January.
    3. Debanjan Mitra & Peter N. Golder, 2006. "How Does Objective Quality Affect Perceived Quality? Short-Term Effects, Long-Term Effects, and Asymmetries," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(3), pages 230-247, 05-06.
    4. Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2010. "Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262232588, December.
    5. Xavier Drèze & Joseph C. Nunes, 2009. "Feeling Superior: The Impact of Loyalty Program Structure on Consumers' Perceptions of Status," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 35(6), pages 890-905, April.
    6. Smith, Andrew & Sparks, Leigh, 2009. ""It's nice to get a wee treat if you've had a bad week": Consumer motivations in retail loyalty scheme points redemption," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 62(5), pages 542-547, May.
    7. Tammo H. A. Bijmolt & Peter C. Verhoef, 2017. "Loyalty Programs: Current Insights, Research Challenges, and Emerging Trends," International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, in: Berend Wierenga & Ralf van der Lans (ed.), Handbook of Marketing Decision Models, edition 2, chapter 0, pages 143-165, Springer.
    8. Rajiv Lal & David Bell, 2003. "The Impact of Frequent Shopper Programs in Grocery Retailing," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 179-202, June.
    9. Aîda Mimouni-Chaabane & Pierre Volle, 2010. "Perceived Benefits of Loyalty Programs: Scale Development and Implications for Relational Strategies," Post-Print halshs-00638594, HAL.
    10. Ran Kivetz & Oleg Urminsky & Yuhuang Zheng, 2006. "The Goal-Gradient Hypothesis Resurrected: Purchase Acceleration, Illusionary Goal Progress, and Customer Retention," Natural Field Experiments 00658, The Field Experiments Website.
    11. Steven M. Shugan, 2005. "Brand Loyalty Programs: Are They Shams?," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(2), pages 185-193.
    12. Bowles, Samuel & Hwang, Sung-Ha, 2008. "Social preferences and public economics: Mechanism design when social preferences depend on incentives," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(8-9), pages 1811-1820, August.
    13. repec:dau:papers:123456789/1603 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Mimouni-Chaabane, Aîda & Volle, Pierre, 2010. "Perceived benefits of loyalty programs: Scale development and implications for relational strategies," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 32-37, January.
    15. Bijmolt, Tammo H. A. & Dorotic, Matilda & Verhoef, Peter C., 2011. "Loyalty Programs: Generalizations on Their Adoption, Effectiveness and Design," Foundations and Trends(R) in Marketing, now publishers, vol. 5(4), pages 197-258, November.
    16. Melissa Bateson & Daniel Nettle & Gilbert Roberts, 2006. "Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting," Natural Field Experiments 00214, The Field Experiments Website.
    17. Lars Meyer-Waarden & Christophe Benavent, 2009. "Grocery retail loyalty program effects: self-selection or purchase behavior change?," Post-Print hal-01913030, HAL.
    18. Amil Petrin & Kenneth Train, 2003. "Omitted Product Attributes in Discrete Choice Models," NBER Working Papers 9452, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Lena Steinhoff & Robert W. Palmatier, 2016. "Understanding loyalty program effectiveness: managing target and bystander effects," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 44(1), pages 88-107, January.
    20. repec:feb:natura:0059 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Arkes, Hal R. & Blumer, Catherine, 1985. "The psychology of sunk cost," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 124-140, February.
    22. Kivetz, Ran & Simonson, Itamar, 2003. "The Role of Effort Advantage in Consumer Response to Loyalty Programs: The Idiosyncratic Fit Heuristic," Research Papers 1738r, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    23. Praveen K. Kopalle & Yacheng Sun & Scott A. Neslin & Baohong Sun & Vanitha Swaminathan, 2012. "The Joint Sales Impact of Frequency Reward and Customer Tier Components of Loyalty Programs," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 216-235, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hu, Xin & He, Liuyi & Liu, Junjun, 2022. "Status reinforcing: Unintended rating bias on online shopping platforms," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    2. Blanca I. Hernández-Ortega & Michael A. Stanko & Rishika Rishika & Francisco-Jose Molina-Castillo & José Franco, 2022. "Brand-generated social media content and its differential impact on loyalty program members," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 50(5), pages 1071-1090, September.
    3. Kokkoris, Michail D. & Hoelzl, Erik & Kamleitner, Bernadette, 2020. "Self-found, spellbound: The sense of own discovery shapes customer bonds with service venues," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 303-316.
    4. Sonja Fourie & Michael Goldman & Michael McCall, 2023. "Designing for loyalty programme effectiveness in the financial services industry," Journal of Financial Services Marketing, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 28(3), pages 502-525, September.
    5. Bies, Suzanne M.T.A. & Bronnenberg, Bart J. & Gijsbrechts, Els, 2021. "How push messaging impacts consumer spending and reward redemption in store-loyalty programs," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 877-899.
    6. Matilda Dorotic & Dennis Fok & Peter C. Verhoef & Tammo H. A. Bijmolt, 2021. "Synergistic and cannibalization effects in a partnership loyalty program," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 49(5), pages 1021-1042, September.
    7. Jaeho Jeong & Dongeon Kim & Xinzhe Li & Qinglong Li & Ilyoung Choi & Jaekyeong Kim, 2022. "An Empirical Investigation of Personalized Recommendation and Reward Effect on Customer Behavior: A Stimulus–Organism–Response (SOR) Model Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-19, November.
    8. Meyer-Waarden, Lars & Bruwer, Johan & Galan, Jean-Philippe, 2023. "Loyalty programs, loyalty engagement and customer engagement with the company brand: Consumer-centric behavioral psychology insights from three industries," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    9. Jisu J. Kim & Lena Steinhoff & Robert W. Palmatier, 2021. "An emerging theory of loyalty program dynamics," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 49(1), pages 71-95, January.
    10. Chen, Yanyan & Mandler, Timo & Meyer-Waarden, Lars, 2021. "Three decades of research on loyalty programs: A literature review and future research agenda," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 179-197.
    11. Faramarzi, Ashkan & Bhattacharya, Abhi, 2021. "The economic worth of loyalty programs: An event study analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 313-323.
    12. De Silva Kanakaratne, Maheshan & Bray, Jeffery & Robson, Julie, 2020. "The influence of national culture and industry structure on grocery retail customer loyalty," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    13. Alex Belli & Anne-Maree O’Rourke & François A. Carrillat & Ljubomir Pupovac & Valentyna Melnyk & Ekaterina Napolova, 2022. "40 years of loyalty programs: how effective are they? Generalizations from a meta-analysis," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 147-173, January.
    14. Bies, Suzanne, 2022. "Examining the effectiveness of activation techniques on consumer behavior in temporary loyalty programs," Other publications TiSEM ade86df3-4846-4318-938f-a, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    15. Jennifer Watson, 2020. "The Provision of Long-Term Credit and Firm Growth in Developing Countries," Asian Journal of Economics and Empirical Research, Asian Online Journal Publishing Group, vol. 7(2), pages 224-234.
    16. Afonso Vieira, Valter & Agnihotri, Raj & de Almeida, Marcos Inácio Severo & Lopes, Evandro Luiz, 2022. "How cashback strategies yield financial benefits for retailers: The mediating role of consumers’ program loyalty," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 200-212.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chen, Yanyan & Mandler, Timo & Meyer-Waarden, Lars, 2021. "Three decades of research on loyalty programs: A literature review and future research agenda," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 179-197.
    2. Steinhoff, Lena & Zondag, Marcellis M., 2021. "Loyalty programs as travel companions: Complementary service features across customer journey stages," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 70-82.
    3. Bombaij, Nick, 2021. "Effectiveness of loyalty programs," Other publications TiSEM 095c506d-5b5c-4ea3-9b41-a, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    4. Bombaij, Nick J.F. & Dekimpe, Marnik G., 2020. "When do loyalty programs work? The moderating role of design, retailer-strategy, and country characteristics," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 175-195.
    5. Alex Belli & Anne-Maree O’Rourke & François A. Carrillat & Ljubomir Pupovac & Valentyna Melnyk & Ekaterina Napolova, 2022. "40 years of loyalty programs: how effective are they? Generalizations from a meta-analysis," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 147-173, January.
    6. Dorotic, Matilda & Verhoef, Peter C. & Fok, Dennis & Bijmolt, Tammo H.A., 2014. "Reward redemption effects in a loyalty program when customers choose how much and when to redeem," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 339-355.
    7. Bazargan, Amirhossein & Karray, Salma & Zolfaghari, Saeed, 2017. "Modeling reward expiry for loyalty programs in a competitive market," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 352-364.
    8. Jisu J. Kim & Lena Steinhoff & Robert W. Palmatier, 2021. "An emerging theory of loyalty program dynamics," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 49(1), pages 71-95, January.
    9. Septianto, Felix & An, Jake & Chiew, Tung Moi & Paramita, Widya & Tanudharma, Istiharini, 2019. "The similar versus divergent effects of pride and happiness on the effectiveness of loyalty programs," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 12-22.
    10. Bies, Suzanne M.T.A. & Bronnenberg, Bart J. & Gijsbrechts, Els, 2021. "How push messaging impacts consumer spending and reward redemption in store-loyalty programs," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 877-899.
    11. Bies, Suzanne, 2022. "Examining the effectiveness of activation techniques on consumer behavior in temporary loyalty programs," Other publications TiSEM ade86df3-4846-4318-938f-a, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    12. Mimouni Chaabane, Aida & Pez, Virginie, 2017. "“Make me feel special†: Are hierarchical loyalty programs a panacea for all brands? The role of brand concept," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 108-117.
    13. Faramarzi, Ashkan & Bhattacharya, Abhi, 2021. "The economic worth of loyalty programs: An event study analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 313-323.
    14. A. Yeşim Orhun & Tong Guo & Andreas Hagemann, 2022. "Reaching for Gold: Frequent-Flyer Status Incentives and Moral Hazard," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(3), pages 548-574, May.
    15. Els Breugelmans & Yuping Liu-Thompkins, 2017. "The effect of loyalty program expiration policy on consumer behavior," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 28(4), pages 537-550, December.
    16. Bruneau, Virginie & Swaen, Valérie & Zidda, Pietro, 2018. "Are loyalty program members really engaged? Measuring customer engagement with loyalty programs," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 144-158.
    17. Arun Gopalakrishnan & Zhenling Jiang & Yulia Nevskaya & Raphael Thomadsen, 2021. "Can Non-tiered Customer Loyalty Programs Be Profitable?," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(3), pages 508-526, May.
    18. Kang, Jun & Alejandro, Thomas Brashear & Groza, Mark D., 2015. "Customer–company identification and the effectiveness of loyalty programs," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 464-471.
    19. Li, Chen & Swaminathan, Srinivasan & Kim, Junhee, 2021. "The role of marketing channels in consumers’ promotional point redemption decisions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 314-323.
    20. Sonja Fourie & Michael Goldman & Michael McCall, 2023. "Designing for loyalty programme effectiveness in the financial services industry," Journal of Financial Services Marketing, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 28(3), pages 502-525, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:joamsc:v:47:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s11747-019-00652-y. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.