A Study on Exploring the Performance of Customer Loyalty Programs

Customer loyalty has been an important issue in the service marketing. Many companies were benefited from developing loyalty programs. However, some companies have increased in cost. Loyalty program should not change the basic structure. While the loyalty program (eg. Customer loyalty card) brings great benefits for retail industry, it has become simplified as ”Bonus card” and caused spurious loyalty. That is, the goal of loyalty programs will become ambiguous as an information- gathering mechanism focusing on gaining more detailed information to retain customers. Therefore, the related literature was collected and the method of in-depth interview was used in this study to examine the effectiveness of loyalty programs in different Scottish hotels, five marketing managers were participated to determine important factors of loyalty. The results indicated that customer loyalty card is not enough to maintain customer loyalty, the combination key factors such as positive word of mouth, customers have the feeling ”value for money” and long-term customer relationship management are vital in producing true customer loyalty.