Starwood Preferred Guest is a loyalty program. A customer who uses a Starwood co-branded credit card is "engaged" in the program. Someone who accumulates points in Membership Rewards or Diners Club Rewards and transfers as required can be seen as an opportunist. Also, the Canadian SPG credit card is issued by MBNA (now Bank of America), not by American Express.
mia, thanks, as usual your responses are informative. I never gave any thought to the implications of "concepts" like so-called
loyalty programs and
co-branding. And I would snicker at the notion of "loyalty" in any of this, but I suppose that the SPG Amex has caused me to prefer Starwood properties all other things being equal, or even not so equal. My AmEx green card and MR does nothing to encourage me in the direction of Starwood because my "reward" is no different depending on where I use that card to charge. So it would make sense if Starwood charged AmEx more for the SPG had through conversions from MR than for the SPG given through the SPG AmEx, though in the end the value of 1 SPG is the same no matter how it was come by.
Can you think of other examples were the "loyal" are greatly advantaged over the "opportunistic" in a way similar to the SPG through SPG AmEx vs SPG through conversion of MR?
What marketing reason can you imagine for the bonuses SPG gives for SPG to airline mile conversions (20K SPG -> 25K miles), making $1 charged spent with SPG AmEx as much as 25% more "productive" than $1 spent with the airline's own affinity card?