Originally Posted by
intuition
These two are not mutually exclusive.
It can easily be argued that offering perks to the highest spenders does not drive revenue and thus drive unnecesary costs. Because highest spenders could very well be those without choice et.c., where the revenue will be pretty much the same regardless of loyalty programme incentives.
A loyalty programme that manages to drive extra revenue exceeding loyalty costs must likely target a much more diverse segment than "highest spenders".
Even prospective future partner airline Delta Air Lines pushes DL credit cards to the American near-equivalent to Svensson crowd to try to lock them in. In some ways, the infrequent but reliably loyal DL flyers are a great deal for DL. DL wants everything from the big spenders to the low spenders, but it’s about hoping to grab the high margin types across the range of spenders and hoping to incentivize more spending.