Optimizing a contractor loyalty program

Our client is a category leader in building materials. For years, it has faced stiff competition for commercial contractor share of installations and used loyalty and reward incentives to win share. To defend its leading position, the client wanted to optimize its loyalty programs and understand how much impact these programs have on sales in the first place.

We designed a qual-quant research study to understand drivers of brand selection and the relative impact of loyalty programs and rewards benchmarked against other drivers, such as price, availability, warranty, etc. Our research involved interviews with top customers and a blind market survey of contractor decision makers. We custom-recruited and screened all respondents, ensuring 100% validated decision maker sample without use of panels.

Our findings clearly laid out the viable potential impact of loyalty programs and which specific benefits to offer which contractors to maximize share of installations. Our recommendations included larger strategic changes in the make-up of the loyalty program as well as smaller tactical suggestions about specific benefits. Our client is currently reviewing and revising the program based on our recommendations.