{"id":1722,"date":"2019-02-19T17:24:32","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T22:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yupingliu.com\/wordpress\/?p=1722"},"modified":"2019-02-19T17:24:32","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T22:24:32","slug":"research-focus-gamify-your-loyalty-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yupingliu.com\/wordpress\/2019\/02\/19\/research-focus-gamify-your-loyalty-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Focus: Gamify Your Loyalty Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author\u2019s note: With this post, I am restarting a previous tradition on my blog to report from time to time the findings from a single research paper. Now named \u201cResearch Focus”, these slightly shorter posts will summarize each research paper in accessible and practically relevant lingo. The focus is on what the research findings mean to practice. The research papers featured will be chosen from recently published or soon-to-be-published work as well as significant working papers that I consider to be highly relevant to loyalty marketing practice. The goal is to facilitate the dissemination of scientific research, build practice knowledge, and speed up the scientific discovery to practice cycle time. I hope you will enjoy the feature!<\/em><\/p>\n

Loyalty program is everywhere, yet engaging consumers in a loyalty program remains elusive to businesses. Look at your own wallet or key ring, and you are likely to see at least a few loyalty cards that you no longer use. You are not alone. The 2017 Colloquy Loyalty Census reports that as many as 54% of loyalty program memberships in the US are inactive<\/a>. A more recent loyalty program engagement survey of 1000+ consumers by CodeBroker shows that 65% of those surveyed are engaged with less than half of their loyalty programs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The loyalty program (dis)engagement problem has various possible solutions. One solution is gamification, that is, introducing gaming into a loyalty program. Examples of this approach abound in practice, offered by familiar brands such as Victorial\u2019s Secret<\/a>, Domino\u2019s Pizza<\/a>, and Starbucks<\/a> (see the picture at the beginning of this post for a screenshot of the currently running Starbucks Bonus Star Hopscotch game<\/a>). In today’s Research Focus paper, to be published in Journal of Business Research<\/a><\/em>, Professor Jiyoung Hwang and her colleague studied when and how gamification helps in a loyalty program context.<\/p>\n

What Did They Do?<\/h3>\n

The researchers created descriptions of four different versions of a coffee shop loyalty program:<\/p>\n