First, Do No Harm: The Loyalty Providers’ Role in Protecting Our Clients’ Brands
By: Barry Kirk, Maritz Loyalty
January 13
Talking about work over coffee with a close friend recently, she remarked, “You know, I don’t envy you your job right now. How is any company getting loyalty out of consumers in this economy?”
Her pity for me – and all loyalty marketers by proxy – is not completely unfounded. Consumer trust in U.S. business is low. In fact, its at its lowest level in 10 years, dropping from a high of 58 percent in 2008 to a dispiriting 38 percent, according to the 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer. To put that in perspective, that’s even lower than immediately after the Enron scandal. Maybe that’s not astonishing after the beating the economy has taken in the last two years, but it’s a statistic that has to weigh heavy on anyone responsible for managing a brand or nurturing customer loyalty.
That decline makes all the more concerning the recent news reports taking several loyalty providers to task for promoting what the reports consider to be deceptive online marketing practices. According to the findings of an ongoing Senate investigation, these companies are accused of using promotions on reputable ecommerce websites to lure customers into unwittingly enrolling in fee-based membership clubs. The practice is enabled by the e-commerce companies themselves, who pass customer credit card data directly to these third parties without clearly notifying the customer. Some consumers say they only realized they’d been charged a membership fee months later after noticing unexplained ‘mystery’ charges on their credit card statements. What is perhaps most unfortunate and ironic about these revelations is that all three companies involved...
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THE PULSE
As the economy rebounds, which factor do you think is the most important driver of employee engagement?