Me, Myself and My Loyalty Program

Sammanfattning: In the current competitive business environment companies strive to build closer ties with its customers. Two of the marketing initiatives that firms are increasingly investing in are one-to-one marketing and loyalty programs. These have been described as two separate CRM-activities and aim at strengthening relationships and loyalty between the brand and customer. Interestingly, loyalty programs offer a great context where one-to-one marketing can be enforced by tailoring marketing communication towards individual members. In this thesis, we merge the two research fields in order to study the effect of using tailored offers within a loyalty program. The study also explores the two main methods of tailoring; system-initiated personalization and customer-initiated customization. Our study uses a quantitative approach and finds that tailoring affects attitudes and intentions towards the loyalty program through an indirect effect of perceived relevance. Furthermore, it partly supports the additional mediating effect of perceived convenience when using personalization. It also fully supports the additional mediating effect of perceived control when using customization. Lastly, no findings could confirm whether personalization or customization is to prefer within a loyalty program.