Loyalty Live: Kobie on The Heart of Loyalty 2024 Consumer Research Report
Loyalty360 recently spoke with Dr. J.R. Slubowski, Kobie’s AVP of Strategic Consulting and Head of Kobie’s Research Center of Excellence, about key findings in its recent consumer research report.
“In past studies, we were a little more exploratory to get a read on what consumers are thinking,” begins Slubowski. “With this one, we entered with specific ideas around what we wanted to talk to consumers about—like the foundational components of programs, the features and benefits that resonate with members, and how they correspond to the ultimate health of a program. We did deep dives in personalization and how loyalty marketers could better engage with people between transactions.”
Kobie asked questions about status and tiers in programs. To better understand consumers’ perceptions, they also asked about new loyalty innovations or items that are part of loyalty programs today that might not see a high level of adoption. Kobie endeavored to tie answers back to its emotional loyalty scoring tool or other indicators of emotional loyalty that could be examined.
Key Findings
One of the biggest findings that emerged from the report is that, more than ever, consumers are signaling they want choice, optionality, and the ability to co-create a loyalty experience when engaging with brands. “Choice and optionality are not new trends. We’ve seen it building gradually over the past five to eight years,” says Slubowski. However, Kobie observed a pivot in its latest research. That desire for choice and optionality is expanding beyond the redemption/reward sphere within the context of loyalty programs to ways that people want to use their points, build their experience, and how they want to access features and benefits when they want them. “It’s ballooned beyond ‘just’ the redemption experience and ‘just’ the rewards,” adds Slubowski.
Kobie also uncovered perceptions on personalization and about how it’s critical to match the medium to the message—and then the message to the member. To achieve true personalization, brands must acknowledge that collecting zero-party data—the information people volunteer about themselves—as part of a zero-party data strategy is often emotional in and of itself.
For brands and marketers who wonder what kind of data they need to collect to drive emotional loyalty, when it comes to zero-party data, loyalty program members are fertile fishing grounds. The act of simply “asking” tends to drive an emotional connection, particularly for those who are engaged in loyalty programs.
In its study, Kobie also discussed joy, fulfillment, and meaningfulness. Slubowski believes that brand programs that can tap into those have the best chance of engaging with members beyond transactions.
“When you think about a game science strategy in that regard, that’s really about human psychology,” says Slubowski. “Understanding human psychology is a fantastic way to achieve those engagement goals.”
Report Reception
To have value, brands and marketing teams must find relevant items to act on. Certainly, brands seek to deliver increasingly impactful loyalty programs, and many want to focus on behavioral psychology components and behavioral economics while driving more value.
Slubowski shares that many Kobie clients have embraced The Heart of Loyalty Study. Kobie’s strategic consulting team has engaged in conversations with clients, assisting them as they discern how to leverage some of the insights and findings that came out of the loyalty study.
“Context matters,” notes Slubowski. “You still need to bring it back to what your program can do and what your members look like so that you can begin to implement some of those insights.” He offers an example. Inspired by the section on endowing progress versus status as a psychological principle, one of Kobie’s clients embraced the concept and began to explore thoughts on how to endow progress within the context of the client’s own program. Those ideas were shared with Kobie for help in evaluating them.
“This created a great collaborative moment between the client and our team,” says Slubowski. “It allowed us to share where we thought they had something and to where they could pivot if necessary.”
Learn More
To learn more from this interview, view the recent Loyalty Live article and video here. If your brand is ready to talk about how to best activate this research to grow enterprise value through loyalty, reach our team today!
