CONSUMER BEHAVIOR AND CUSTOMER LOYALTY PROGRAM: CASE OF TESCO IN THAILAND

Loyalty programs (sometimes referred to as loyalty systems) are part of marketing communication, respectively one of the classic tools of sales promotion.Through this tool marketing can effect on customers in order to stimulate their loyalty.The basic principle of loyalty program is to motivate customers to more frequent purchases or multiple purchases whether of goods or services.The essence of this tool is to reward consumers for their behavior.The primary purpose of loyalty programs is to establish and maintain a loyal customer long term relationship (Zamazalova, 2010).If customers are involved in loyalty programs they can acquire various forms of rewards for their purchases.Various kinds of rewards (discounts, gifts or bonuses …) are key factors on which the loyalty program is built and which is the basic of the motivation.Loyalty marketing is based on the fact that 20% of customers at the company can create up to 80% of sales.Moreover the most loyal customers are most profitable for the company (O'Brien and Jones, 1995).Loyalty programs are regarded as a tool through which you can build long term loyalty.The essence of a functioning loyalty program is to provide rewards to customers who often buy in a certain.The paper introduces the partial results of the marketing research on Tesco loyalty programs in Thailand.The aim was to identify the reasons that lead consumers to participate in loyalty programs and the benefits that are the main motivators for participation in the loyalty program.