Opinion On “Loyalty of the Store Reward Card Buyer Betrayed”
January 27th, 2012
Great article. Regarding the comments above, I have experience with both the Best Buy and Starbucks programs. In the case of Best Buy, there are two anti-loyalty issues. The first is that they bungled the switch from their base loyalty card to their mastercard program. They ask you all the time to upgrade and then when you do, you lose history, points, your login changes, etc. it is a poorly executed transition for a customer who if not paying attention could lose ‘rewards’ otherwise earned. Additionally, they send out these offers that don’t work if there is already an item on sale, but you don’t know this until after the purchase. To me, it is a deceptive practice and because of these things, I shop around a bit more before I purchase from them. In the case of Starbucks, the new program changed the way I do business with them. The point about expensive coffee is dead on; the discount you ‘bought’ in the previous year of the program went a long way to adjusting for that. The new program is confusing (aka frustrating) for customers and the Starbucks employees that serve them. When speaking to them, no one is happy about the change or really fully understands how the new program works although everyone is kind of getting it by now and the reality of the program is goal setting theory in. It would seem that if you don’t have money on the card or only part of the money on the card, you don’t get credit for the transaction. If someone gives you a gift card, you have to move the money to the gold card or it doesn’t count. Also, since there is no longer a discount when buying other things in the store, the premium they charge isn’t offset for loyal customers. Music for example is too expensive vs buying in Target, Best Buy, etc. I realize that this is expected to be an impulse purchase, but they put so much effort into their Starbucks Picks program, it seems a waste of an initiative if no one will buy. I no longer will. In my case, this has easily cost Starbucks in sales; quite frankly to Dunkin Donuts benefit.
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