Impacts of Reward Accrual Effort on Redemption Behavior in a Multi-Vendor Loyalty Program

This research explores two key facets of behavior (reward point accrual and redemption) that consist of a loyalty program. It focuses on assessing the impact of accrual effort level on three types of redemption behavior: speed, unit size, and hedonic preference at the individual level by using large scale transaction data from a multi-vendor loyalty program providing flexible environment for point accrual and redemption. Findings from this research demonstrate that customers tend 1) to speed up point redemption, 2) to enlarge the size of redeemed points, and 3) to prefer utilitarian rewards as the level of effort at the accrual stage of reward point increases.