Very fair points, and some of them cannot be dismissed as long as sticking with some "intellectual honesty"
Originally Posted by
cityflyer369
@San Gottardo: I really do not understand why you came up with this idea of moving Gold to the level of the current Platinum and why you have not seen yet that this is a very questionable idea.
We can be certain that it doesn't take this forum or individual posters like me to come up with this idea.
In fact, over the years, I had the impression that there was consensus among posters here that there was virtually no difference between Gold and Platinum, and that Platinum did not have sufficient benefits. So much so that the FT delegations that exchange with AF regularly brought this up in conversations with the airline and asked what additional benefits for Plat could be to position it more distinctively from Gold. From the ovbservation that the two are very similar it is only a very small step to simply reposition the levels: merge the two that have virtually no difference (Gold and Plat), and create a new one.
It has two major disadvantages:
1. It creates the type of customer confusion that you can see here in the reactions to your suggestion. There are two reasons for this: (a) It is very difficult to communicate effectively what the new Gold is about (see posts here).
Sorry, but that is easy to dismiss. AF could simply say "same benefits as before, new colour of the card", which was something I put forward repeatedly. It is very very simple and very very straightforward. Not sure where the confusion comes from.
But maybe as so often emotion (=the perceived loss of a colour and the feeling of not being the highest level any more) clouds the reason and the ability to understand the factual argument?
(b) Psychlogically, humans never like it when something is taken from them, even if it is only the colour.
(And on top of this, a significant proportion of the population is against change in general. Even if this applies only to 2% of FB members, FB will have an unnecessary problem.)
Yeah... sigh... you have a point there. Just like people in elections often vote for a supposedly better status quo some FB members want status quo even if their life doesn't change.
2. Moving Gold up to Platinum would leave a huge gap between curent Silver and the new Gold. This would harm the incentive effect of the FB program.
Indeed. And I was surprised why noone had mentioned that yet. In a scenario where AF keeps on giving current Plats the same benefits attached to a Gold card, it might then
i) widen the gap to Silver - and thus pinch all of those who would have qualified for the old Gold but no longer for the new Gold. But then, as someone further up - who if I remember correctly also happens to prefer the status quo - mentioned, today one of the main motivators to go beyond Gold is to have Platinum for Life. In the future, that motivator would be to reach Gold and Gold for life. Again, the qualification levels for FB Platinum are roughly similar in terms of miles as that of other programs for their Gold level, and it seems to work. Why would the FB customer base be so different?
ii) also increase the threshold to Silver. Silver is very easy to obtain, and does not offer many benefits. Is it really sufficiently attractive? Will the not very frequent flyer only take Air France to get his Silver level instead of another company which might be less expensive, offer better schedules, better service, etc? I doubt it. So maybe AFKL would not really lose out all that much by not giving those people a Sliver card all that easily. And maybe even increase the benefits for the new Silver as well.
For these reasons, if you would like to have a new level above the current Platinum, which would probably be a good idea from AFKL's perspective, you have to give it a new name and introduce it on top of the current levels. Like Platinum Plus, Titanium, Executive Platinum or Platinum One (see Qantas). This would also have the additional benefit that the communication of the fantastic exceptional exclusivity and greatness of the new level would be much easier.
Yes, that is true. Again, as pointed out earlier, the names do not matter, my point was more a structural one (merge two almost identical levels and create one above) than a naming one. Many people feel "downgraded" by having a colour on their card which is currently the colour of the level below, even if the benefits stayed the same. Interesting psychology, but if customers feel that way then it shouldn't be ignored. What those new names and labels could be I don't know. As long as they don't hire the guy who comes up with the names of IKEA furniture I am fine. AFKL and especially AF usually do a very good job on marketing and also brand positioning (delivering on those promises is a different story altogether, not related to this at all.)