So this is why most of us use our miles for those upgrades...

Stanford Graduate School of Business marketing professor Itamar Simonson and a colleague at Columbia Graduate School of Business have embarked on a broad research effort to understand why customers join loyalty programs and how they use them. They recently completed a paper that examined how the amount of effort consumers must expend to get a reward -- how many miles, points or purchases they must accumulate -- affects the types of rewards they prefer. They found that the more effort required, the more consumer preferences shifted from necessity rewards, such as a grocery or gasoline voucher, to luxury items, such as spa certificates, gourmet dinners, or cruises.

http://news.excite.com/printstory/ne...d-business-sch

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"What do you mean you didn't get miles for that?!"