Loyalty program

How reward influences our desire for coffee

The relationship between brand and consumer is probably one of the most important corporate assets, capable of determining a lasting and defensible competitive advantage.
For this reason, companies have for years adopted strategies aimed at customer loyalty through the use, for example, of loyalty programs; this is a process that aims to reward the customer for their loyalty to the brand. A classic example is the loyalty card issued by your favorite coffee shop.

The goal is to increase the emotional involvement of the consumer, but how does this happen?

In 1934, behavioral psychologist Clark Hull demonstrated how, within a maze, mice increased their engagement and speed of execution as they approached the final goal. This was because the brain’s reward system was activated in their minds. From an anatomical-functional point of view, this is a complex functional structure that is located mainly in the brain centers responsible for controlling physiological balances and those involved in motivational and emotional behavior. Through dopaminergic activation, the brain reward system ensures that behaviors useful to satisfy organic needs are gratified and reinforced through the emotional component of pleasure, thus inducing the animal (and humans) to repeat them.

The effects of these considerations on the human being, however, came only in 2006, thanks to a study by the Graduate School of Business at Columbia…