Case Study: Customer Loyalty

How do you create loyalty for purchasing $10 CD's AND $3,000 televisions? Focus on the customer and give them what they want. Which in this case was a "thank you" and deals on cool products. Karen led the development of Best Buy's Reward Zone loyalty program, one of the most successful retail loyalty programs today. From creating the financial model to selling it in to senior leadership to managing the national rollout - from marketing, IT, retail and finance, she was involved in listening to what customers wanted, understanding what behavior the company wanted to drive and marrying the two into a mutually exclusive relationship. Which in this case was a points program that gave cash back for spending at Best Buy. And it worked. In it's first year across the country, the Reward Zone program drove a 23% incremental sales increase, 1/2 of the company's EVA growth for that year.