June Cotte (Ivey School of Business) - CME to host

http://www.ivey.uwo.ca/faculty/directory/june-cotte [1]

Customer Temporal Orientation: Insights for Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs play a prominent role in many firms’ customer relationship management programs, but not all programs are successful. While analytical innovations allow better processing of customer information, understanding the type of relationship customers’ desire in a loyalty program can be more elusive. We suggest that understanding different customer segments based on psychological mindsets can provide important strategic insights. Our research focuses on customers’ temporal orientation -- the tendency to think in the present, future or past. We take a multi-method approach to our investigation. First, we use in-depth interviews to explore how temporal orientation influences customers’ ideal loyalty program attributes. Second, we conduct a survey of loyalty club members and test a SEM model based on the predictions arising from Study 1. Our research offers managerially practical insights for identifying psychologically driven segments that are more likely to engage in co-production of a long-term loyalty relationship as well as communication strategies that are likely to interest and engage these different psychological mindsets.