What do CUSTOMERS Want?

Consumers across the board have a wide and varied range of responses to terms such as "loyalty scheme", "frequent shopper card", and "customer club". Some see a loyalty programme as an opportunity to get something for nothing - for buying what they were going to buy anyway - while others see a loyalty programme as a devious way for a company to get them to buy things they don't really need or want. In all markets and with all programmes, there will be both enthusiasm and suspicion when a new loyalty programme or customer club makes its first appearance.

Of course the key to gaining consumer acceptance and rapid adoption of a programme (and therefore greater customer and data acquisition) is to understand what the consumer really wants from the company, and then to use the data collected from them to better understand how to fulfil those needs. No loyalty programme should ever force customers to buy things they don't want or need. Instead, the programme should be structured to simply find out what customers really want, when they want it, and how they want it provided.

What consumers really want to be offered...
But the loyalty programme is only one method in the marketer's toolkit, and providing consumers with the kind of interactions they want is also vital to maintaining a healthy, trusting, and long-lived customer relationship. In The Wise Marketer's online poll entitled 'Consumer attitudes to marketing techniques', on a scale of 1 (enthusiastic) to 4 (hate), consumers were found to be enthusiastic about discounts and cash rebates (60.3%), followed by personalised direct mail (24.1%), loyalty programmes (17.2%), coupons and traditional media advertising (6.9%), and online ads and e-mails (3.4%).

However, the balance changed significantly when the positive scores (1s and 2s) were combined, with consumers widely preferring discounting or cash rebates (94.8%), loyalty programmes (84.4%), coupons and traditional media ads (55.2%), Personalised direct mail (55.1%), and online ads and e-mail (31.0%).

What really makes consumers loyal to a brand...
When asked "What do you believe is the biggest driver of true consumer loyalty to specific brands?", marketing executives from around the world reported that the top four drivers of true consumer-brand loyalty are:

1. Satisfaction (51%);
2. Emotion (32%);
3. Usefulness (12%);
4. Pricing (5%).

So, when it comes to building true consumer loyalty to a specific brand, rather than building loyalty to a retailer or supplier, the poll showed that there is very little that can beat good, old-fashioned satisfaction with the product or service. However, emotional bonds with the brand are catching up in terms of overall importance to brand loyalty, while the product or service's usefulness and pricing appear to have very little effect on most consumers' choice of preferred brand. Interestingly, despite giving the poll's respondents the opportunity to vote for 'other' drivers of brand loyalty, no major drivers other than the four shown above were forthcoming.

How consumers want to receive marketing messages...
Interestingly, when The Wise Marketer conducted online polls into consumers' receptiveness to both web site and television advertising techniques, "intrusive web adverts" (e.g. ads that force the user to click on them to move on) were found to cause an 88% defection rate, where users close or navigate away from the web site immediately. This rate drops significantly for "passive adverts" such as banners and 'advertorial' text.

Television advertisers are having a rough time, too. The common television advertising practice of increasing the volume during ad breaks may have originally been intended to keep the adverts audible when viewers left the viewing area temporarily, but for those who remain seated in front of the television the volume of the adverts renders any personal thought or sociable conversation almost impossible. It is interesting to note that 9% always press the mute button during ad breaks, and almost twice as many said they 'usually mute' during ad breaks. This adds up to more than one-quarter of the population that will seldom hear an advert. Add to that another 27% who 'sometimes' mute the ads, bringing the potential lost audience to well over 50%.

This article is based on the research and advice of dozens of loyalty thought leaders found in 'The Loyalty Guide III', which is The Wise Marketer's latest 900+ page global guide to loyalty programmes, techniques, best practices, trends, and theory. The report is available now for £1,150 (approx. Euro 1,595 / US$2,295). See TheLoyaltyGuide.com for the full executive summary, downloadable chapter samples, table of contents, online searching, and ordering details.