New trend report: The Future of Loyalty

The Future of Loyalty explores how the rules of the game are changing, as retailers explore personalization and simplify their rewards. According to Bryan Roberts, insights director at loyalty marketing company TCC Global, the key concept is “emotional” loyalty, rather than “transactional” loyalty. “We get bombarded with so many commercial messages and discounts and coupons and vouchers, so much is about the transactional stuff—it’s about price, or it’s about location, it’s about product,” says Roberts, whose firm has implemented in-store loyalty schemes for retailers such as Lidl and Co-op in Europe. He adds that, when shoppers are asked about what drives emotional loyalty, they respond that the two big drivers are “the in-store experience—is it nice, is it better, is it friendlier? And how much the retailer cares. Not just about the individuals as shoppers, but also do they care about healthy eating, do they care about the environment, do they care about suppliers, about employees? So there is a real emotional driver to loyalty.”