The Hidden Consumer Motivators Behind Loyalty Program Success

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - June 27, 2024 - PRLog -- Kobie, a global leader in loyalty marketing technology and services, today released The Heart of Loyalty: 2024 Consumer Research Report, unveiling a uniquely academic approach to consumer motivations.

Kobie's research team, comprised of PhDs who specialize in the intersection of human psychology and consumer perceptions, fielded the research study with more than 4,000 consumers in industries like retail, financial services, travel, hospitality, quick serve restaurants and more. As one of the most academically rigorous reports in the field, the findings reveal key questions brands should be asking about how consumer perceive their loyalty program, and what strategies can be activated to increase member engagement and drive deeper emotional loyalty.

Key learnings for brands looking to improve their loyalty program health include:

1. The lifecycle of disengagement: Understand why members disengage at different points and how to address the underlying reasons.
2. The power of choice and co-creation: Learn how to leverage optionality and co-creating the experience as a powerful motivator that shifts mindsets towards cash back and other benefits.
3. Perfecting personalization: Discover how and why consumers react when personalization falls short, and what you can do to prevent disengagement.
4. Gamification & engagement: Explore how loyalty strategies and game science can drive engagement during the moments in between transactions.
5. The duality of tiers: Understand the dual desires of consumers for both endowing status and seeing progress, and what the implications are for tiered loyalty programs.
6. Navigating newness: Address the challenge of consumer resistance to new or unfamiliar concepts, and how age and emotional loyalty influence adoption.

"This research gives loyalty marketers information they can use immediately," says Dr. JR Slubowski, Kobie's AVP of Strategic Consulting and head of their Research Center of Excellence. "Our study differs in that it ties actionable program insights to what makes us tick as human beings – what motivates us – in terms of what drives deeper emotional connections."

Slubowksi received his doctorate in 2022 with dual emphasis of Marketing and Management and has worked in the customer experience and loyalty fields for more than a decade. He adds, "Loyalty practitioners, whether new to loyalty or tenured, will find this study especially useful as they aim to understand and shift consumer's perception of their program to be more positive, which in turn, builds emotional loyalty and ultimately grows enterprise value for brands."

Recently named the only Leader in Services and Technology by Forrester, Slubowski and the Kobie team are equipped to help readers put the report findings into action.

About the report:

Kobie fielded their 2024 research study with over 4,000 consumers across the U.S. and Canada, drilling into a variety of topics like appeal of features and benefits, personalization, engagement, recognition and more. As the only provider who sees emotional loyalty as an input vs. an output of loyalty, Kobie use this lens and a proprietary Emotional Loyalty Scoring® (ELS) methodology to tie the findings together and provide actionable insights for brands.

To access the full research report, visit: https://kobie.com/2024-consumer-research/

About Kobie:

As a trusted partner for more than 30 years, Kobie delivers market-leading, end-to-end loyalty solutions designed to enable customer experiences for the world's most successful brands. With a strategy-led, technology-enabled approach, Kobie is consistently named an industry leader by Forrester with a mission of growing enterprise value through loyalty for clients.​

Reaching more than 330 million consumers through loyalty, Kobie's solutions are robust, but our philosophy is simple. The thoughtful design of proven solutions coupled with extensible, scalable, and configurable technology leads to a seamless customer experience. We bring strategic tools and frameworks to design programs that deliver results, and leverage our proprietary technology, Kobie Alchemy® Loyalty Cloud, to deliver and measure loyalty experiences. To learn more about partnering with Kobie, visit www.kobie.com.