IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejmic/v1y2009i1p101-23.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Moral Hazard and Customer Loyalty Programs

Author

Listed:
  • Leonardo J. Basso
  • Matthew T. Clements
  • Thomas W. Ross

Abstract

Frequent-flier plans (FFPs) may be the most famous of customer loyalty programs, and there are similar schemes in other industries. We present a theory that models FFPs as efforts to exploit the agency relationship between employers (who pay for tickets) and employees (who book travel). FFPs "bribe" employees to book flights at higher prices. While a single airline offering an FFP has an advantage, competing FFPs can result in lower profits for airlines even while ticket prices rise. Thus, in contrast to switching-cost treatments of FFPs, we may observe prices and profits moving in opposite directions. (JEL D82, L93, M31)

Suggested Citation

  • Leonardo J. Basso & Matthew T. Clements & Thomas W. Ross, 2009. "Moral Hazard and Customer Loyalty Programs," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 101-123, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:1:y:2009:i:1:p:101-23
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/mic.1.1.101
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/mic.1.1.101
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    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. Blundell,Richard & Newey,Whitney K. & Persson,Torsten (ed.), 2006. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521871525, October.
    2. Blundell,Richard & Newey,Whitney K. & Persson,Torsten (ed.), 2006. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521692083, October.
    3. Armstrong, Mark & Vickers, John, 2001. "Competitive Price Discrimination," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(4), pages 579-605, Winter.
    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. Ramon Caminal, 2022. "Time‐Limited Loyalty Rewards," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(4), pages 962-998, December.
    2. Henri Bussink & Bas ter Weel, 2022. "Costs and benefits of an Individual Learning Account (ILA): A simulation analysis for the Netherlands," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 22-077/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    3. Diego Escobari & Nicholas G. Rupp & Joseph Meskey, 2019. "An Analysis of Dynamic Price Discrimination in Airlines," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 85(3), pages 639-662, January.
    4. Ramon Caminal, 2012. "The Design and Efficiency of Loyalty Rewards," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(2), pages 339-371, June.
    5. Ramon Caminal, 2009. "The design and efficiency of loyalty rewards," Working Papers 408, Barcelona School of Economics.
    6. Laurent Callot & Johannes Tang Kristensen, 2014. "Vector Autoregressions with parsimoniously Time Varying Parameters and an Application to Monetary Policy," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 14-145/III, Tinbergen Institute, revised 09 Apr 2015.
    7. Morimoto, Yu, 2020. "Do citizens of a city that owns a local public airport have attachment to the airport and use it?," MPRA Paper 103442, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Chan Wang & Pu‐yan Nie, 2020. "Retail competition using free shopping shuttle bus strategies," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(6), pages 1010-1019, September.
    9. Christiaan Behrens & Nathalie McCaughey, 2015. "Loyalty Programs and Consumer Behaviour: The Impact of FFPs on Consumer Surplus," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 15-048/VIII, Tinbergen Institute.
    10. Takalo, Tuomas, 2019. "Switching costs in the Finnish retail deposit market," Research Discussion Papers 15/2019, Bank of Finland.
    11. de Jong, Gerben & Behrens, Christiaan & van Ommeren, Jos, 2019. "Airline loyalty (programs) across borders: A geographic discontinuity approach," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 251-272.
    12. 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.
    13. Foschi, Matteo, 2017. "Self-Control in the Retailing Industry: Inducing Rejection of Loyalty Schemes," CRETA Online Discussion Paper Series 37, Centre for Research in Economic Theory and its Applications CRETA.
    14. Socorro, M. Pilar & Betancor, Ofelia, 2020. "Air transport subsidies for resident passengers: The unexpected effects on competition," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    15. Els Breugelmans & Tammo Bijmolt & Jie Zhang & Leonardo Basso & Matilda Dorotic & Praveen Kopalle & Alec Minnema & Willem Mijnlieff & Nancy Wünderlich, 2015. "Advancing research on loyalty programs: a future research agenda," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 127-139, June.
    16. Espen R. Moen & Fredrik Wulfsberg & Øyvind Aas, 2020. "Price Dispersion and the Role of Stores," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 122(3), pages 1181-1206, July.
    17. Nesset, Erik & Helgesen, Øyvind, 2014. "Effects of switching costs on customer attitude loyalty to an airport in a multi-airport region," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 240-253.
    18. de Boer, Evert R. & Gudmundsson, Sveinn Vidar, 2012. "30 years of frequent flyer programs," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 18-24.
    19. Luttmann, Alexander & Ladd, Daniel, 2023. "Loyalty rewards and redemption behavior: Stylized facts for the U.S. airline industry," MPRA Paper 119214, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Federico Rossi & Pradeep K. Chintagunta, 2023. "Consumer Loyalty Programs and Retail Prices: Evidence from Gasoline Markets," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(4), pages 794-818, July.
    21. Escobari, Diego & Rupp, Nicholas & Meskey, Joseph, 2018. "Dynamic Price Discrimination in Airlines," MPRA Paper 88078, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    22. Takalo, Tuomas, 2019. "Switching costs in the Finnish retail deposit market," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 15/2019, Bank of Finland.
    23. Agostini, Claudio A. & Inostroza, Diego & Willington, Manuel, 2015. "Price effects of airlines frequent flyer programs: The case of the dominant firm in Chile," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 283-297.
    24. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2019_015 is not listed on IDEAS
    25. Yuk‐fai Fong & Qihong Liu, 2011. "Loyalty Rewards Facilitate Tacit Collusion," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(3), pages 739-775, September.

    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. Boyer, Pierre C. & Kempf, Hubert, 2020. "Regulatory arbitrage and the efficiency of banking regulation," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    2. Xiangkang Yin, 2013. "Two-part tariffs set by a risk-averse monopolist," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 109(2), pages 175-192, June.
    3. Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Claus Thustrup Kreiner & Emmanuel Saez, 2007. "The Optimal Income Taxation of Couples as a Multi-Dimensional Screening Problem," Working Papers 2007-1, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    4. Griva, Krina & Vettas, Nikolaos, 2015. "On two-part tariff competition in a homogeneous product duopoly," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 30-41.
    5. Rosa Branca Esteves, 2009. "A Survey on the Economics of Behaviour-Based Price Discrimination," NIPE Working Papers 5/2009, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    6. Antelo, Manel & Bru, Lluís, 2021. "Horizontal contracts in a dominant firm-competitive fringe model," MPRA Paper 105774, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Jorge, Sí­lvia Ferreira & Pires, Cesaltina Pacheco, 2008. "Delivered versus mill nonlinear pricing with endogenous market structure," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 829-845, May.
    8. Fischer, Christian & Rasch, Alexander & Wenzel, Tobias, 2020. "Complex pricing and consumer-side attention," ZEW Discussion Papers 20-075, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    9. Stephen Davies, Catherine Waddams Price, and Chris M. Wilson, 2014. "Nonlinear Pricing and Tariff Differentiation: Evidence from the British Electricity Market," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    10. Liu, Qihong & Shuai, Jie, 2013. "Multi-dimensional price discrimination," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 417-428.
    11. Juan Sebastian Vélez-Velásquez, 2020. "Banning Price Discrimination under Imperfect Competition: Evidence from Colombia's Broadband," Borradores de Economia 1148, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    12. Silvio Sticher, 2013. "Competitive Market Segmentation," Diskussionsschriften dp1313, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    13. Simon Cowan, 2007. "The welfare effects of third-degree price discrimination with nonlinear demand functions," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(2), pages 419-428, June.
    14. Aryal, Gaurab & Gabrielli, Maria F., 2020. "An empirical analysis of competitive nonlinear pricing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    15. Fatemi, Farshad, 2010. "Information Acquisition and Price Discrimination," MPRA Paper 20399, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Antelo, Manel & Bru, Lluís, 2021. "Intrapersonal price discrimination in a dominant firm model," MPRA Paper 108412, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Ye, Lixin & Zhang, Chenglin, 2017. "Monopolistic nonlinear pricing with consumer entry," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(1), January.
    18. Kocherlakota, Narayana & Phelan, Christopher, 2009. "On the robustness of laissez-faire," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(6), pages 2372-2387, November.
    19. Per Krusell & Anthony Smith & Joachim Hubmer, 2015. "The historical evolution of the wealth distribution: A quantitative-theoretic investigation," 2015 Meeting Papers 1406, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    20. Schlatterer, Markus & Saur, Marc & Schmitt, Stefanie, 2019. "Horizontal product differentiation with limited attentive consumers," VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy 203571, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • L93 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Air Transportation
    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:aea:aejmic:v:1:y:2009:i:1:p:101-23. 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    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.