A Study On Customer Reward Programs' Designing And Utility

As the effective tool of cultivating, developing and retention loyalty customers, customer reward programs are increasingly implemented in marketing, and related issues have also aroused the concern of academics. Though researchers have studied the reward programs from different aspects, most of the academic literatures focus on the elements of construction and the impact on consumer buying patterns or the corporate profits from the program, there still is a relative lack of published literature of putting the designing of elements of reward program and its mechanism on customer loyalty take into account.There are four major results in this paper as listed below:(一),Summarizing the theoretic and literature in the fields of reward program designing,reward program utility,relationship marketing,consumer keeping,involvement theory and so on. It has been found in this paper that the status and questions of reward program research, and the reference methodology for further research.(二),In the designing of reward program, in accordance with the principle of its design, the paper introduces quantitative analysis model on the basis of qualitative analysis, and sums up, contrast the fixed method of elements of reward program, then puts the focus on setting of reward threshold and reward interval. At the same time, the paper gives an explanation on reward interval from the perspective of mathematical economics, and gains that, in the nonlinear integral system function, there is an optimal multiple value of fixed rate of reward, and when divides the interval on the optimal fixed rate of reward, the rate between the latter interval and former interval is the optimal multiple value of fixed rate of reward.(三),In the utility of reward program, Firstly, according to the previous research model on elements of reward program to customer keeping, the paper increases two variables: reward type and reward rank and constructs the new model actually; Secondly, based on the Key Mediating Variables(KMV) model, the paper expands the mechanism model of value perception of reward program on customer keeping, which considers the trust and commitment as its core, analysing that how the reward program influences the customer loyalty through trust and commitment and some other factors.(四),Using a questionnaire survey and the analysis of the empirical data analysis, the paper confirms: reward threshold, reward rate, reward rank, reward type, reward time have positive implications for customers keeping; Under increasing regulation factors conditions, value perception of the reward program influences customer loyalty through different paths.