Loyalty Programmes in the Competitive Environment: Status Quo and Future Perspectives (with the focus on loyalty cards)

Some years ago companies concentrated on the acquisition of new customers and didn’t pay much attention to the establishment of long-term relationships with them. Nevertheless, the development of marketing in the direction of globalisation, increasing competition and new information technologies led to the reorientation of marketing strategies from the transition marketing which focused on single transactions to the relationship marketing which offers a chance to become close to the customers, to satisfy their needs and thus gain competitive advantages on the market. Since then the aim of companies has been to deliver more long-term value for the customers in order to increase their satisfaction and loyalty.Many companies introduce nowadays customer loyalty programmes which aim to increase customers’ satisfaction and so make existing customers more loyal, to get better information about these customers and thus to receive more profit. Nevertheless, customers’ enthusiasm about loyalty programmes is decreasing: there are more and more cards filling their wallets; the amount of information they get from companies sometimes overload their post-boxes and emails; and the issue of private data security has meanwhile become a very acute topic when considering the joining a loyalty programme.The present master thesis helps identify the current acceptance and improvement potentials of card-based loyalty programmes in general and loyalty cards in particular based on the results of the conducted qualitative empirical research