How Covid19 Affected The Loyalty Industry
Loyalty industry aims to adopt lucrative measures so as to attract the customers and earn their loyalty. Loyalty industry works on the model of providing rewards be it a cash or non-cash to lure the customers and make sure they return and make the purchases.
Brand loyalty may be defined as the positive interconnectedness of a customer with the brand. The brand loyal customers are those who remain loyal to the particular product and would not consider any other product no matter how much discounts or offers the competitors has to offer. They stick to the product no matter whatever the price or the convenience might the other brands offer.
Brand loyalty of the customers is one of the challenging tasks to acquire in today’s scenario. The customer’s need and preferences change at a faster rate and the business find it difficult to retain the customers. The companies run various brand loyal and reward programs in order to generate trustworthy and loyal customers.
Impact of COVID19 on the people
COVID19 pandemic had a really bad impact throughout all the industries. It has resulted in a huge loss to the global economy. The situation has become really critical and even the top-notch business is staggering and finding ways to attract the customers and maximise their output.
COVID19 has led to the unforeseen circumstance which has made the business and the industry clueless. The marketers and the industry are finding it difficult to adapt to the changing market scenario and keep their business at least moderate, even if they are not able to make profits.
The lockdown imposed by the governments of the countries and the people being locked in their homes for relevant a longer period of time, has led to the change of the customer buying behaviour and the trends. The customer buying trends has gone through a change during the past few months. Due to the economic crisis, many people lost their job and there was a kind of situation of recession in the economy. The people have become really conscious and the aim to spend more on the primary essential elements.
The digitalisation and the ecommerce business has taken a boom during the pandemic as people didn’t prefer to get out of their homes, so they usually made purchase from the trustable brands and thus this lead to the insurgency in the sales of the ecommerce websites. Here, the brand loyalty comes in play. The brands or the companies who were make to make believe the customers, the necessary precautions they were taking and the covid protocols they were following lead to the trust building of the customers.
People mainly avoided the outside food but later the food delivery companies like the Zomato and Swiggy took lucrative and preventive steps and spread awareness of the kind of measures they were taking to tackle the pandemic. They imposed various taglines which resonated their efforts in tackling with the COVID.
Impact of COVID19 on the loyalty programs
Customer loyalty has drastically seen a steep curve due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Two of the major industries like the hospitability and the airline industry has shattered. The industry has lost many of its loyal customers and have faced huge margins of loss which is not recoverable even after a decade. These two industries are trying their best to cope up with these challenges and so they have taken innovative measures. For instance, the hospitality and the airlines industry to make a hold on the loyal customers has extended the time period of the loyalty programs and the expiration date of the memberships were pushed later to the end of the year.
Brands and the business are conducting detailed analysis and also trying to collaborate and cooperate with the other brands in order to sustain in the market. Let’s take the example of American Express. The American Express is devising great and looking to enhance the quality of the new rewards program for their co-branded cards in order to increase the brand loyalty.
There is a much vouched for statement in the pandemic, which is the new normal. The companies and the loyalty industry are struggling to find the ways in order to adapt with the changing business scenario. They are working constantly to make detailed analyses on the customers changing buying trends and the behaviour and analysing the taste and the preferences. Brands that would be quick to adapt to these changes and conduct loyalty programs on the lines would be able to eventually achieve success later in the time period.
Some of the tips that the companies should keep in mind are:
- Try building trustworthy relationship with the customers by implementing empathy in practise
- Make efforts to extend the subscriptions or memberships expiration dates of the customers.
- Try to implement new rewarding schemes
- Try to make the loyalty programs more fun and engaging for the customers so that it is able to draw their attention.