Bill Hanifin

BrainTrust Query: Ideas for Building Loyalty in Spite of System Beaters

January 12, 2012

FROM RETAILWIRE:
Marketers are training us to become system beaters, or those shoppers who time their purchases to when their favorite brand is on sale or just load up on another acceptable brand on sale the day they shop. Is the combination of discount deals, social and mobile turning shoppers into better system beaters?      [more...]

I'm not sure I understand the term "like-gate," but think it refers to requiring customers to "like" your page in order to access the promotion.

If so, this behavior dilutes the value of a "Like" over time and speeds us to the day where consumers don't even think about what they're clicking. They will "Like" anything in order to get what they really want. In the end, we create meaningless traffic stats for the website and distort customer data for the web page owner.

Adding a game feature by rewarding those who share most is a solid idea but needs to be executed in a clever way to make it "sticky."

Overall, we should encourage retailers to seek to build a customer experience that adds more than just price to the purchase decision process. Unless retailers intentionally wish to compete solely on price, they have to break away from this mold.