Retail loyalty’s big leap

My former DMNews colleague, Nathan Golia, wrote a great piece about the growth of retail loyalty programsin a past issue — which I must say, if I can toot our own COLLOQUY horn just a tad, dovetails nicely with the insights gleaned from our Retail Loyalty Index.

Basically, the article points out that more top retailers are beefing up their loyalty programs, including Target, Best Buy and Hilton, offering more rewards and discounts than in the past. Certainly this is due to the price wars that retailers continue to wage in the wake of the lingering recession. The 2010 COLLOQUY Retail Loyalty Index clearly showed that prices are on the mind of most consumers, and that they link loyalty and price more strongly than in the past.

However, it’s reassuring to hear that companies such as Best Buy are also looking to increase their dialog with customers and move towards a long-term relationship that goes beyond price and discounts which may not be sustainable over the long haul. We believe that while retailers may continue to compete on price in some areas, they must work on other ways to stand out from the likes of Walmart, which clearly is winning the loyalty battle over price in most markets. And some of those ways include increasing long-term relationships with consumers through well-run loyalty programs as well as taking advantage of enterprise loyalty tactics — using data/analytics to improve everything from targeting and customer service to merchandising and price strategies.