Customer loyalty programs: from single partner to multi partner

Rapid changes are taking place in the overall business environment. Due to a proliferation of similar looking and performing products the competitive advantage that organizations achieved due to product differentiation is now not possible for longer time. Now a day's only differentiated product is not sufficient but there should be some additional means to retain their customers. Customer loyalty is a much discussed topic among retail managers in all kind of businesses. Academic research on loyalty has received considerable attention and is largely focused on measurement issues. Customer Loyalty Programs can be considered as one of the popular tool for building loyalty in their customers. So now it is the very important for all firms to have or to plan the implementation of customer loyalty initiatives such as loyalty cards or frequent user programs. In this paper detailed information about loyalty programs are given. We also explained important benefits of loyalty programs. This paper also explains how there is evolution of loyalty program from single vendor/partner to Multi partner loyalty programs.