The Drivers of Loyalty Program Success: An Organizing Framework and Research Agenda

Despite the proliferation of loyalty programs over the past three decades, evidence regarding their effectiveness in cementing customer loyalty remains mixed and often inconsistent. The current lack of understanding of what factors drive a successful loyalty program represents an important knowledge gap. Accordingly, this review (1) organizes current thinking on loyalty program management and (2) outlines an agenda for future research. This review is organized around three categories of drivers that affect loyalty program effectiveness: program structure, reward structure, and customer factors. In synthesizing this body of research, this review identifies important research questions that offer opportunities for hospitality managers and academic researchers to collaborate on a mutually beneficial topic that has both theoretical and practical importance. Selected by Sage as the Featured Article: 50th Anniversary Edition Resulted in 39 Media Clippings with a total circulation of 13, 676, 827 in 2010McCall4_The_drivers_of_loyalty_program_success.pdf: 14453 downloads, before Aug. 1, 2020