Originally Posted by
Kacee
More advanced in knowledge, yes, that's fine. But I would hope most of us are not narcissistically self-obsessed to the degree we believe that our choice of one loyalty program over another makes us superior to those who have selected another.
Those bloggers do contribute to the trend that regular honest non-maximizing users feel of losing out and thus we are seeing more of these churning activities and loophole usage. For example, I hold these bloggers partly responsible for so many average users to a buying frenzy on the Travel packages when they don't really have in mind a particular hotel they want to stay and a date they want to stay in. The fear of missing out cause many to take riskier behaviors that they otherwise don't do. Like I don't suddenly buy a pile of USA dollars because I fear the CAD dollar is going to be worth less next year and I want those US dollars for travel in the years to come.
I am a big supporter in changing our program so the gap between the best maximizers and the average user is small - like a 10-20% making maximizing a lot of work without much pay off and people would do it just for hobby. Currently, it is too crazy on the 3 or 4x more profitable to churn or use various tricks to make it than to do the hard work.
As for data proof. We consider some facts in life true enough that we believe it to be self-evident and don't need data to support - but we will change our minds if data refutes it - ie showing it is false. For example, we believe the earth round - it's not round - it's fatter on the equator but good enough we say the earth is round. We claim it to be self evident that all men (women) are created equal - there is no data to support this conclusion- but it's true enough we take it. Hard work will eventually pay off - again no data to support this - but we believe it to be self evident.