industry overview
The loyalty industry serves as a bridge between consumers and merchants. For merchants, the bridge increases sales and customer retention.
To consumers, the bridge offers rewards, discounts, rebates and other perks to improve their shopping experience.
To date, there are over 1.3 billion cards on the street, with the average household belonging to numerous loyalty programs. The loyalty industry
is enormous and fragmented both technologically and operationally in ways that fail to provide the full potential to merchants and customers.
To overcome this fragmentation, the Help Worldwide Network participates in the LoyaltyShare™ clearinghouse, as a means to provide a global
platform for 'loyalty coalitions' and inter-program 'cooperation'.
LoyaltyShare™ is designed to allow existing 'closed loop' loyalty programs to become 'open loop' participants in a national network of merchants,
members, and compelling / cooperating loyalty value propositions.
loyalty marketing
For merchants, loyalty programs are a marketing effort. They offer the opportunity to create new customers and to reward frequent customers. This may include offerings like a discount card, rebate card, member card, VIP card, coupons, frequent flier miles, hotel points, or accumulated earnings towards specific purchases - such as a car, electronics, or even college. The underlying assumption of these programs was that lower price, rebates or 'points' towards something the customer wants is a good incentive that will promote more shopping.
cause marketing
Supporting key global causes is a strong value proposition that is inspiring more and more people to change their shopping habits. The ability for consumers to
support a charity or cause of their choice through their daily purchase decisions is a powerful tool. With proper planning, cause marketing can have a strong
effect on both charities and consumers, and can activate additional sectors including media attention, grassroots support, and social networks.
Recent research indicates that consumers strongly believe that they can and must make a real difference, and that they will actually change consumption
habits to do so:
"85% of consumers are willing to change brands of their consumption habits to ake tomorrow's world a better place."
"88% of consumers surveyed feel it is their duty to contribute to a better society and environment, and 83% say that they personally can make a difference."
Nov 2007, Edelman