IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joreco/v25y2015icp71-80.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reward me, charity, or both? The impact of fees and benefits in loyalty programs

Author

Listed:
  • Eason, C. Clifton
  • Bing, Mark N.
  • Smothers, Jack

Abstract

This research examines the effects of loyalty program annual fees (no fee vs. $10 fee in Study 1, and no fee vs. $10 vs. $25 fee in Study 2) and benefit structures (self benefit, altruistic benefit, and combination self/altruistic benefit in both Studies 1 and 2) on intentions to join a loyalty program (LP) and future spending if one is willing to join the LP. Using random assignment in a between-subjects research designs and general linear modeling analyses in two different studies, this research finds that an annual fee does decrease consumers’ intentions to join an LP but may also increase the future spending intentions of customers who join a fee-based LP. Furthermore, a benefit structure that shares the reward with both the customer and a charity of his or her choice is found to be an appealing option. Thus, offering a fee-based LP that provides benefits to both the user and a charity could increase a retailer’s profitability and competitiveness through additional revenues, differentiation, and image enhancement.

Suggested Citation

  • Eason, C. Clifton & Bing, Mark N. & Smothers, Jack, 2015. "Reward me, charity, or both? The impact of fees and benefits in loyalty programs," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 71-80.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:25:y:2015:i:c:p:71-80
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2015.04.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698915000442
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jretconser.2015.04.001?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. Julie Pirsch & Shruti Gupta & Stacy Grau, 2007. "A Framework for Understanding Corporate Social Responsibility Programs as a Continuum: An Exploratory Study," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 70(2), pages 125-140, January.
    2. 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.
    3. Ran Kivetz, 2003. "The Effects of Effort and Intrinsic Motivation on Risky Choice," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(4), pages 477-502, December.
    4. 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.
    5. Robert J. Fisher & Mark Vandenbosch & Kersi D. Antia, 2008. "An Empathy-Helping Perspective on Consumers' Responses to Fund-Raising Appeals," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 35(3), pages 519-531, February.
    6. 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.
    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. Gong, Heming & Bian, Xuemei & Zheng, Chundong, 2024. "Leveraging celebrities with inconsistent attractiveness and credibility for charitable endorsement: A cue diagnosticity perspective," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    2. 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.
    3. Jiang, Kan & Mo, Silan & Qin, Meilian, 2024. "Descriptive or injunctive? The effect of sustainable normative appeals and advertising orientations on environmentally responsible consumption behavior in a collective action perspective," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    4. Tiphaine Gorlier & Géraldine Michel, 2020. "How special rewards in loyalty programs enrich consumer–brand relationships: The role of self‐expansion," Post-Print hal-02494605, HAL.
    5. Mantovani, Danielle & de Andrade, Lucas Magalhães & Negrão, Angela, 2017. "How motivations for CSR and consumer-brand social distance influence consumers to adopt pro-social behavior," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 156-163.
    6. Matti J. Haverila & Kai Haverila & Caitlin McLaughlin & Hailey Tran, 2022. "The impact of tangible and intangible rewards on online loyalty program, brand engagement, and attitudinal loyalty," Journal of Marketing Analytics, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 64-81, March.
    7. Hwang, Jiyoung & Choi, Laee, 2020. "Having fun while receiving rewards?: Exploration of gamification in loyalty programs for consumer loyalty," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 365-376.
    8. Devika Rani Sharma & Balgopal Singh, 2023. "Understanding the Relationship Between Customer Satisfaction, Customer Engagement and Repeat Purchase Behaviour," Vision, , vol. 27(4), pages 449-457, August.

    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. Amir Gandomi & Amirhossein Bazargan & Saeed Zolfaghari, 2019. "Designing competitive loyalty programs: a stochastic game-theoretic model to guide the choice of reward structure," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 280(1), pages 267-298, September.
    3. 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.
    4. Bombaij, Nick, 2021. "Effectiveness of loyalty programs," Other publications TiSEM 095c506d-5b5c-4ea3-9b41-a, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    5. 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.
    6. Meyer-Waarden, Lars, 2015. "Effects of loyalty program rewards on store loyalty," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 22-32.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. 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.
    10. Sharma, Dheeraj & Verma, Varsha, 2014. "Psychological and economic considerations of rewards programs," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 924-932.
    11. Camilleri, Adrian R. & Dankova, Katarina & Ortiz, Jose M. & Neelim, Ananta, 2023. "Increasing worker motivation using a reward scheme with probabilistic elements," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    12. Ulph, Alistair & Panzone, Luca & Hilton, Denis, 2023. "Do rational people sometimes act irrationally? A dynamic self-regulation model of sustainable consumer behavior," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    13. 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.
    14. Butori, Raphaëlle & De Bruyn, Arnaud, 2013. "So you want to delight your customers: The perils of ignoring heterogeneity in customer evaluations of discretionary preferential treatments," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 358-367.
    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. Gutt, Dominik & von Rechenberg, Tobias & Kundisch, Dennis, 2020. "Goal achievement, subsequent user effort and the moderating role of goal difficulty," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 277-287.
    17. Michelle Yoo & Billy Bai & Ashok Singh, 2020. "The evolution of behavioral loyalty and customer lifetime value over time: investigation from a Casino Loyalty Program," Journal of Marketing Analytics, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(2), pages 45-56, June.
    18. Utpal M. Dholakia & Itamar Simonson, 2005. "The Effect of Explicit Reference Points on Consumer Choice and Online Bidding Behavior," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(2), pages 206-217, October.
    19. 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.
    20. 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.

    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:eee:joreco:v:25:y:2015:i:c:p:71-80. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-retailing-and-consumer-services .

    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.