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VOS CLIENTS SONT-ILS ENGAGÉS? MESURE DE L’ENGAGEMENT DES CLIENTS ENVERS LES PRO

VOS CLIENTS SONT-ILS ENGAGÉS? MESURE DE L’ENGAGEMENT DES CLIENTS ENVERS LES PROGRAMMES DE FIDÉLITÉ Virginie Bruneau* Université Catholique de Louvain, Center for Consumers and Marketing Strategy (CCMS) virginie.bruneau@uclouvain.be Pietro Zidda Université de Namur, Center for Consumers and Marketing Strategy (CCMS) pietro.zidda@unamur.be Valérie Swaen Université Catholique de Louvain & IESEG School of Management (LEM-UMR9221), Center for Consumers and Marketing Strategy (CCMS) valerie.swaen@uclouvain.be * Place des Doyens 1, Place des Doyens, 1 bte L2.01.01 B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgique, Tél. 32 (0)10 47 84 81, Fax 32 (0)10 47 83 24. Résumé : L'engagement des clients est de plus en plus au centre de l'attention des praticiens et des chercheurs. Bien que les programmes de fidélité (PF) sont fréquemment utilisés afin d’engager les clients dans la relation avec les entreprises, aucune recherche n’a considéré l’engagement des membres des PF envers les programmes auxquels ils adhèrent. Les mesures d'engagement disponibles ne s’adaptent pas en outre au cas des PF. A l’aide de trois études, cette recherche conceptualise l’engagement envers les PF comme la manifestation de six types de comportement envers les PF et développe une échelle afin de les mesurer. Bien que des recherches antérieures sur les PF considèrent exclusivement des comportements tels que l'utilisation de la carte ou l’échange de points fidélité comme signaux de l'engagement des clients, notre étude va au-delà et montre que ces comportements ne semblent pas être de bons indicateurs du niveau de l'engagement des membres des PF. Mots clef : engagement ; programme de fidélité ; développement d’échelle ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS ENGAGED? MEASURING CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT TOWARDS LOYALTY PROGRAMS Abstract: Customer engagement is increasingly gaining attention among practitioners and academics. Although loyalty programs (LPs) are frequently used to engage customers in relationships, no previous research considered engagement in LPs. Current measures of engagement do not adequately capture the customers’ LP engagement. Across three studies, this research conceptualizes LP engagement as six behavioural manifestations towards the LP and develops a scale to measure them. While previous research on LPs only considered behaviours such as card usage or point redemption to study customer engagement, our study shows that these behaviours do not seem to be good indicators of the level of the customer’s engagement. Keywords: loyalty program; customer engagement ; scale development 1 ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS ENGAGED? MEASURING CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT TOWARDS LOYALTY PROGRAMS Introduction Customer engagement has emerged as a prominent construct in recent years and is increasingly gaining attention among practitioners and academics. To engage customers in relationships, loyalty programs (LPs) have become an inescapable tool. Nowadays, LPs not only offer monetary incentives but also incorporate the social aspects of the relationship with their members, through various forms of personalized communication. Consumers’ enthusiasm to enroll in these programs keeps on growing over the last years. From 2012 to 2014, total LP enrolments in the US increased by 26% (Berry, 2015). But customers do not participate to the programs they enroll in. The proportion of ‘active’ memberships among total memberships has dropped from 2010 to 2014, decreasing from 46% to 42% (Berry, 2015). Figures suggest that firms fairly well manage to acquire new members with their LPs but that they are unable to engage customers in relationships with their programs. Whereas the improvement of customer engagement has become one of the main objectives of LPs, much remains to be understood about customer’s engagement in LPs. To the extent of our knowledge, no definition or measure of customer engagement towards LPs exists. Our research questions are (i) what customer engagement towards LPs is and (ii) how to measure it? We offer two main contributions. First, we theoretically contribute to the emergent literature on engagement by conceptually delineating the LP engagement construct. Second, by providing a scale for measuring customer engagement towards LP, we propose a tool for assessing customer’s responses to LPs that is novel to the domain of loyalty programs. We thus offer firms a way to assess their LP members’ engagement and to better manage their LP in order to enhance customer engagement in a relationship. Background Although engagement remains an emergent rather than mature theme in the academic literature, there exists a considerable conceptual and descriptive work on engagement across various marketing fields. However, there are gaps as to what engagement in general means in marketing research. Researchers agree with the fact that customer engagement reflects the relationship between a consumer and a focal object. Whereas all definitions characterize such a form of relationship, it is worth noting that marketing researchers have difficulty in agreeing on the exact nature of the concept. Some view engagement more as a state of mind whereas others consider it as a set of activities or behaviours from the customer. We also take the latter perspective and suggest that engagement involves more than a motivation, that it is characterized by activities with respect to the focal object. We consider here engagement as the customer’s active presence beyond purchase in a relationship with the firm. Gaining customer engagement has become one of the most important goals of LPs. LPs consist of integrated, structured and ruled (based on collection and redemption rules) systems of marketing actions that aim to encourage enduring repeat purchases and increase the cost of switching by providing short-and long-term incentives. These rewards refer to any abstract (e.g., convenience, hedonic, novelty, social recognition, self-esteem) or concrete (e.g., economic savings, miles, points, discounts) stimuli that trigger consumers’ internal cognitive responses (Meyer-Waarden, 2015, p. 22). Although LPs have acquired an important position in the marketing mix of many firms, which in turn has resulted in the invasion of loyalty cards in customers’ wallets, empirical evidence on their potential impacts is mixed. Some research showed positive effects of LPs (e.g., Bolton et al., 2000; Keh and Lee, 2006; Leenheer et al., 2 2007; Lewis, 2004; Liu, 2007) while other studies showed no or mixed effects. It is necessary to understand both part of the two-way relationship to better grasp the effectiveness of LPs (Meyer-Waarden and Benavent, 2009). In other words, besides the firm’s point of view (e.g., LP design), it is fundamental to understand customers’ active presence in the relationship with LPs. Some research has considered to some extent customers’ activity with LPs. To assess program loyalty, Evanschitzky et al. (2012) evaluated card usage by customers. Similarly, others studied the customer reward redemption behaviour to evaluate the effectiveness of LPs (Bridson et al., 2008; Dorotic et al., 2012). But in the vast majority of the studies, the authors compare cardholders to noncardholders, that is only LP membership is taken into account to evaluate their effectiveness. No distinction is made between engaged and non-engaged customers. Effectiveness of LPs is assessed based on all program members without taking into account the fact that some customers may be members but never participate in the program. Because many LPs fail to perform as expected, an alternative approach to understand their effectiveness is needed. We propose that engagement towards LPs will be a good proxy of the customer engagement towards the firm and subsequently, towards loyalty. In line with the perspective of customer engagement we take, we consider customer LP engagement as the customer’s behavioural presence in the relationship with the firm induced by the LP. The customer engagement towards the LP is a component of the customer whole engagement in the relationship with the firm as it comprehends only the presence in the relationship built throughout the LP. Methodology and results We rigorously undertook the scale development procedure proposed in the literature. First, 22 in-depth interviews with LP members in various industries were conducted to collect qualitative data about how they consider their participation in LPs. Content analysis of the responses revealed that LP engagement includes six different behaviours. The most spontaneous behaviour is the proactive use of the card. Respondents stated that spontaneously thinking about using their card when passing the cashier is a form of engagement. The second behaviour reported by the individuals is the fact that they do some effort to redeem their points to get their benefits. When they achieved a certain goal, they will do the necessary deed to receive their reward. The third behaviour described by participants is adapting their purchase behaviour to receive more loyalty points. They reported being active when buying more or other products in order to get more advantages from the program. The fourth behaviour includes sharing information about the program with others. Respondents stated that the latter activity includes also spreading the word and talk about their program. The fifth behaviour described by respondents is the fact that they are receptive to LP informational stimuli. For them, opening a communication (e.g., e-mail, brochure, flyer) linked to the program and take some time reading it, represents also a form of engagement. The last behaviour reported is proactively searching for information. For our participants, proactively keeping informed about the program signals engagement. From our qualitative material and based on previous literature on LPs, we generated a pool of 44 items describing LP engagement that need be further investigated in a quantitative study. uploads/Geographie/ vos-clients-sont-ils-engages-mesure-de-l-x27-engagement-des-clients-envers-les.pdf