Cultivating Brand Loyalty In Even The Toughest Customer

Americans are both more loyal and more fickle than ever before, judging by the number of customer rewards cards they have and the number they actually use. Households, on average, hold membership in 29 loyalty programs across the retail, financial services, travel and other industries — that’s a total of 3.3 billion nationwide, up 26 percent from 2013, according to a 2015 report by Colloquy, a loyalty marketing research company. But most households use only 12 of those cards, a proportion that has dropped 4.5 percent from 2013. “There was a time when having a loyalty program differentiated you from others,” said Emily Collins, a senior analyst with Forrester Research. “Now, that’s not true.” Loyalty programs do attract customers, according to a report to be issued on Tuesday by Bond Brand Loyalty in collaboration with Visa. About 80 percent of the roughly 19,000 consumers in the United States and Canada who responded to an online survey said they were more likely to continue doing business with brands that offered loyalty programs. Read more at The New York Times.