The Role Of Numerosity Effect And Progress Framing On Customer Loyalty Program-Perspective Of Construal Level

Customer loyalty program has always been one of the hot topic in the field of modern marketing management.It provides customers with economic value,emotional value and social value that will affect their repeat purchase behavior accordingly,and further improve customer satisfaction.The bonus points program is the most used model of customer loyalty program in real life.Loyalty programs offer rewards via mediums of different magnitudes.There are significantly differences between people's purchase behavior and purchase times,when the magnitudes is different(its essence remains unchanged).On the other hand,individual motivation will depend on whether the progress stage are framed as the distance traveled from the initial state to the current state-‘to-date' versus framed as the distance left from the current state to the end state-‘to-go.Basing on an overview of the related literatures and Construal Level Theory(CLT),the current study explored the influence of numerosity effect and progress framing on customer loyalty program,and the underlying mechanisms.In this paper,two experiments are designed.Each experiment consists of two sub-experiments: experiment 1a,experiment 1b,experiment 2a and experiment 2a.We used college students as participants and these experimental materials were decision scenes of points accumulation.The study 1 examined the influences on customer loyalty program from the impact of level and magnitude.The study 2 further examined the dynamic interplay between the framing of one's progress from an initial state toward an end state(to-date vs.to-go)and construal level in influencing motivation in goal pursuit.Experiment 1a which used the global-local perception paradigm to simulate the different construal level,was a 2×2×2 mixed design,and(level: high,low)*(magnitude: high,low)*(reward distance: near,far).In the three independent variables,the level and magnitude were between-subjects variables,the reward distance was within-subjects variables.The dependent variables were progress perception,program loyalty,and recommendation likelihood.Research have shown that the group with high-magnitude program would(a)judge progress to be higher,(b)be more loyal,and(c)be more likely to recommend the program than low-magnitude program group.When construal level was low,participants assigned to the high-magnitude program condition relative to those assigned to the low-magnitude program would(a)judge progress to be higher,(b)be more loyal,and(c)be more likely to recommend the program.Experiment 1b used Behavior Identification Form(BIF)to distinguished the high construal from low construal level.This study was designed as a(level : high,low)*(magnitude: high,low)*(unit information: present,absent)full-factorial,between-subjects study.Results showed that unit information was present,the differences between those high-magnitude relative to those low-magnitude would be attenuated even eliminated when construal level was low.Experiment 2a was used in 2(level: high,low)*2(progress framing: to-date,to-go)*3(progress stage: beginning,middle,end)three factor mixed factorial design with level and progress framing and construal level as between-subjects factors and progress stage as a within-subjects factor.The dependent variable was the motivation in goal pursuit.The results reflected that the main effect of progress stage proved to be significant,indicating that motivation in goal pursuit decreased as participants moved from the beginning via the middle to the end.The influence of progress framing was affected by progress stage.More specifically,when at the beginning of the customer loyalty program to-date participants were more motivated to progress to the end state,Conversely,at the end of the goal pursuit process to-go participants were(marginally)more motivated to finish the task than to-date participants,Motivation in the middle of the task did not differ between the progress framing conditions.Experiment 2b explored the psychological mechanism that the construal level and progress framing influenced the motivation of customer loyalty program.We used level as independent variable,progress framing as a moderator,perceived goal distance as a mediator,the motivation in goal pursuit as the dependent variable.Study 2b showed that construal level and progress framing had a significant interaction effect on perceived goal distance and the motivation in goal pursuit;the moderating effects of progress framing on the relation between construal level and the motivation in goal pursuit were mediated by perceived goal distance.The conclusions were as follows: There was obvious numerosity effect in the bonus points program.Individuals prefered high-magnitude program to low-magnitude program.The influence of progress framing on motivation was affected by progress stage in goal pursuit.Base on construal level theory,this study provided a new explanation perspective for customer loyalty plan in the field of marketing management.