NY Times article on Starbucks Club Rewards
Excerpt below is from full article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/07/bu...ll&oref=slogin
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Loyalty experts note that Starbucks has little choice than to try to crack the code, given the sheer number of transactions at stake. “The average American adult makes over 200 restaurant decisions in a single year, versus a few plane tickets,” said Jeffrey D. Lipp, president and chief executive of Chockstone. His company helps customers, including some Starbucks competitors, build and run their own loyalty programs.
What he has found is that it doesn’t take a lot to get diners, for example, to do what restaurants want. One Chockstone gambit involves using the customer’s receipt to make an offer. Return within 10 days, perhaps, and you can get a free dessert, the slip says.
“It’s amazing this stuff works so well,” Mr. Lipp said. “What we’ve found is that people can be bought for a cookie.”
Perhaps the same will be true for free refills and three pumps of cinnamon syrup at Starbucks. To get the goodies, however, customers must use the Starbucks card.
This card, a run-of-the-mill gift card that many customers choose to reload regularly with money, has become a juggernaut. Already, it is the payment vehicle for one in seven Starbucks transactions, and consumers loaded and redeemed more than $1 billion on the cards in the company’s most recent fiscal year. Starbucks figures it will activate 50 million of them this year alone.
If you want to be part of the new rewards program, you’ll have to get a card. This is a pain. Wallets are thick enough already. Partly as a salve for the added bulk, Starbucks decided to make all its perks available immediately to rewards program members. You don’t have to earn the privileges by spending $50 a month or wait until you’ve bought 10 beverages.