{"id":5808,"date":"2014-04-02T06:12:09","date_gmt":"2014-04-02T12:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5808"},"modified":"2014-04-02T06:12:09","modified_gmt":"2014-04-02T12:12:09","slug":"thank-you-for-shopping-customer-loyalty-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5808","title":{"rendered":"Thank You for Shopping: Customer Loyalty Programs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A href=\"http:\/\/thenewinquiry.com\/blogs\/the-beheld\/thank-you-for-shopping-customer-loyalty-programs\/\">Autumn Whitefield-Madrano<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Yesterday, I was informed that I\u2019d \u201cunlocked\u201d the \u201cVIB Level\u201d of Sephora\u2019s customer reward program. What this means in Sephoraspeak is that by \u201cearning\u201d 350 \u201cpoints\u201d at the store, I will receive seasonal VIB-only gifts\u2014presumably along the lines of the free lip gloss I received whilst shopping during my birthday month, back when I was merely a Sephora \u201cBeauty Insider\u201d\u2014that I will have advance access to sales, and that I get \u201cdibs\u201d on new products, so that I will be the first lady on the block to have NARS\u2019s newest nail polish in Quivering Otter, or whatever the color of the season is.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&nbsp;What this means in you-and-me-speak is that I have spent more than $350 at Sephora\u2014not, as the company would put it, \u201cearned\u201d more than 350 \u201cpoints\u201d at Sephora\u2014since this time last year.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&nbsp;It was a shock to realize that I\u2019d spent $350 at Sephora in the past 12 months, to be sure, but my financial navel-gazing is another post altogether. What \u201cunlocking\u201d this \u201cVIB Level\u201d made me think about was customer reward programs, and what we\u2019re supposed to get out of them. With many customer loyalty programs, you actually save money. You might do this immediately\/directly, as in my drugstore\u2019s practice of advertising \u201cspecials\u201d that are only \u201cspecials\u201d if you are literally a card-carrying member of the drugstore\u2019s loyalty program, or it might be savings down the line, as with frequent-flier miles. But the point is: You save money, as in cash, as in you have a compelling financial interest to use the loyalty program (which, of course, means that to some degree you\u2019re loyal to the vendor, though of course consumers can belong to multiple loyalty programs, making them not loyal at all).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Autumn Whitefield-Madrano: Yesterday, I was informed that I\u2019d \u201cunlocked\u201d the \u201cVIB Level\u201d of Sephora\u2019s customer reward program. What this means in Sephoraspeak is that by \u201cearning\u201d 350 \u201cpoints\u201d at the store, I will receive seasonal VIB-only gifts\u2014presumably along the lines of the free lip gloss I received whilst shopping during my birthday month, back when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5808"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5809,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5808\/revisions\/5809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}