#407: Understanding Loyalty in Italy & Key Take-Outs from The European White Paper

Paula: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for loyalty marketing professionals. I’m Paula Thomas, the founder and CEO of Let’s Talk Loyalty. Today’s episode is hosted by Charlie Hills, Managing Director of Mando – Connect, a UK based agency that uses smart data to create brilliant partnerships and rewards that really work.

 If you work in loyalty marketing, make sure to join Let’s Talk Loyalty every Tuesday, every Wednesday, and every Thursday to learn the latest ideas from loyalty experts around the world.

This episode is brought to you by Collinson. Worldwide leaders in Customer Engagement and loyalty, creating an orchestrating customer engagement and loyalty initiatives and programs for some of the world’s biggest brands in travel, retail, and financial services, doing it globally for over 30 years. Want to know more? 

Go to collinsongroup.com.

Charlie: Hello and welcome to episode 407 of Let’s Talk Loyalty. I’m Charlie Hills, the Managing Director and Head of Strategy for Mando – Connect, WPP’s loyalty specialist partnerships and rewards agency. We have created a new white paper in partnership with YouGov that explores loyalty, membership appeal, and impact across 24 European markets.

And I’m delighted to be hosting a series of six podcasts with some of the experts featured in the paper to help listeners better understand loyalty across Europe. Today, I am delighted to welcome Cristina Ziliani. Crristina is a Professor of Marketing at the University of Parma in Italy. She lectures on loyalty management and has been the Director of the Loyalty Observatory since 1999.

Dedicated to research, consulting and education on loyalty management, CRM, and CX. She’s the author of over 50 scientific papers on loyalty and five books, the latest being Loyalty Management from Loyalty Programs to Omnichannel Customer Experiences, published by Routledge. She has provided the expert commentary on the Italian market in the white paper.

Today we will be learning about Cristina’s favorite loyalty programs, what the loyalty landscape looks like in Italy, and which of the programs to watch. I hope you enjoy our conversation today.

Hello Cristina, and welcome to today. I’m absolutely delighted to have you on the Let’s Talk Loyalty podcast. Thank you so much for coming. How are you? 

Cristina: Oh, thank you Charlie. It’s so good to see you and actually hear your voice. Thank you so much for having me. I’m fine, thank you. Very, very well.

Charlie: Oh, great. Well, welcome. And without really further ado, I’m gonna go straight into it cause I know our listeners really want to hear what your views are on loyalty and what your thought about the white paper. So we’ll start with Paula’s first question, that we ask every guest on the podcast series.

You know, what is your favorite loyalty program? 

Cristina: This question is a bit tricky for me. You know, first of all, because we do research from an academic viewpoint on loyalty programs. We do training and consulting. So, we’re involved with so many programs that I know if I mention one, then lots of other people we say, oh, you didn’t mention ours.

And actually that’s because there are so many interesting loyalty programs around and very much so over the past few years. An example has been the white paper we worked together on, where I learned about many programs in other countries that, you know, are really doing great. So, there are so many.

Charlie: Yeah, and I think we’ll cover off later in the podcast as well, you know, actually, which you think are the best programs and the ones that our listeners should be looking out for. So tell us a little bit about your loyalty background. How did you get into loyalty?

Cristina: Oh, well I started with my PhD thesis. I was actually, that was many years ago and I was in the UK and that was the end of the nineties. And in the UK, Tesco was already, you know, working with the loyalty scheme, working with the data, and it was something that it was still to come to Italy. But, you know, it looked like a very transformative trend for retailers. That’s my academic background. And so I started doing research on that and when I came back to my university in Italy, we decided it was worth establishing the research center on that, and that’s how my observatory started monitoring loyalty and retailing. And then we expanded to other sectors, many countries. And that’s how it started. 

Charlie: Gosh. And tell us a little bit more about the observatory, cause it’s one of the, sort of the most famous loyalty institutions in the world. I’m sure our listeners would love to sort of understand the sort of work that you do there. 

Cristina: It’s actually, I guess one of the oldest, you know, being established, 24 years ago. Yes, it’s based at the University of Parma, a small group of researchers, and we do academic research, applied research. Some training and consulting for companies. And because we also run master program in marketing where we teach, you know, loyalty and CRM and data science, we train the new generations of loyalty managers and CRM managers, and it’s really nice to keep in touch with them.

We do projects, of course, you know, we provide resources to companies, you know, CVs, and over the past free years we have developed connections with other scholars working on loyalty in other countries in the States, in Belgium, in the UK. And that’s really nice because we do research together and a little bit, you know, like we did with the white paper, you know, being connected with experts in other countries. It’s really nice. You do work and you learn a lot.

Charlie: So it must be wonderful to sort of see that full life cycle from researching what the industry is doing now to then sort of training up the next people who are gonna run it and innovate it. And I know when we come to talk on the case studies, actually, you’ve got some lovely kind of former students who are now in these programs.

Cristina: That’s right.

Charlie:  Yeah, it’s a fantastic model and I think, you know, as a loyalty nerd, it’s such an interesting thing to see how you then develop that insight and then apply it and help the industry move on. I know you create a lot of research and a lot of white papers. And obviously one of the, the ones this year, was when we were lucky enough to work on together, the Understanding Loyalty Across Europe, white paper.

And we were a community of seven experts together drawn from across European markets. And tell our listeners a little bit about that paper and what did you enjoyed about working on that paper and what were your sort of key takeouts and the big things that you learned from it. 

Cristina: Well, it was, first of all, it was really interesting to look at European data, meaning being able to compare countries and because, you know, of course we read research that countries specific, but everybody has their own survey methods, their own samples.

So looking at a European sample, being able to see differences, that made sense from a statistic of your point was really, you know, shedding light on the differences across the different countries. And also the second thing that I liked, apart from, you know, comparisons was how you, I mean the researchers, they decided to split up the analysis of loyalty between, you know, impact on behavior, impact on emotions, you know, the way you constructed the type of methodology because even if we always speak about loyalty, it’s worth spending a few minutes trying to reflect on what we mean by loyalty. 

And of course does the behavioral side, does the emotional side. and so it was nice that the analysis also help us split this concept of loyalty into its three components, the ones that are analyzed in the white paper and seeing the differences at such a level of detail.

Because, you know, we always look at, you know, penetration of loyalty programs, penetration of loyalty guards, but they’re just one indicator. And then, for example, it was interesting for me to see that Italians were, you know, maybe doing, you know, and the very top of some behaviors regarding loyalty, but not on others.

For example, Italians spend more as a result of being members of the loyalty scheme, but they don’t recommend royalty scheme so much, which came a little bit as a surprise to me because Italians, you know, we like to talk a lot, but, so it’s nice to go in depth into the different elements of loyalty. That’s one of the things that I like.

Charlie: yeah, I think that was one of the most interesting things for us actually when we were constructing the methodology is to understand actually what are the metrics that loyalty marketers need, but critically what can they act on? And I think that that killer moment where we were like, actually the real things we need is, is membership.

So penetration, you know, 57% in Italy, so slightly under the European average, but you know, but not far off. And then looking at appeal and then those impact metrics and that blend of that emotional impact. And then also that sort of, you know, transactional, functional, impact was the things that we thought were the most interesting across all those 24 markets.

But it kills me cause I really want to dig into it more. And I think that’s where it then really came to life. Bringing the experts like yourself in to take that sort of market view and to bring that data to life and also bring that wealth of insight. About the Italian market, you know, to bear on the data and help our readers to understand actually why that’s the case. Cause as you say, you know, we all know Italians love to talk. So it’s surprising that in your market, you know, it’s not driving recommendation perhaps as much. 

What were the sort of key things that really stood out for you about the Italian market in the context of this broader research? Because I think that’s what we tried to do in the research and in this podcast series is to bring out, you know, the differences in the market.

So, we’ve had our Czech Republic, expert on in the, in the last podcast, and I think that was interesting in that market to talk about, you know, similarities to the German market, but differences to others. What really stood out for you and what do you think our listeners should know? You know, top three things about, you know, the loyalty market in Italy.

Cristina: Well, first thing I would like to start with the number you gave a few more moments ago. 57% of Italians are members, a lot of these schemes. If you put this in perspective, 57 is an average, across the situation that is very different across sectors. 

For example, Italy is very mature in terms of loyalty schemes in the supermarket industry. That started, you know, like 20 years ago and more. And very, very below average on other industries where there’s still a lot of. Scope for loyalty schemes. I’m thinking of pharmacists, I’m thinking of, you know, bookstores or utilities, and that’s very much connected to the fragmentation of our country, although it’s a big market.

And so it’s interesting from, you know, for loyalty practitioners, but there’s still a lot of traditional. Know small businesses, not big retail chains nationwide. And so this explains why there is still scope for loyalty schemes. 

And then second point, when we were mentioning before, Italians don’t recommend their schemes that much. I try to reflect on that. One piece of information that comes from our own research, says that a lot of loyalty schemes go back more than 10 years ago. And they haven’t been renovated, you know, so maybe, you know, our, they need some, you know, refreshing and people get used to loyalty schemes and if they don’t see much novelty in it, it simply fades back in the background. They’re still members, they still participate, but they don’t have this element of novelty and wow to make them talk about it. So, there could be a message for Italian companies.

Why not you know, thinking of refreshing, especially now that we have new touchpoints, digital ones, a lot of loyalty schemes around Europe I’ve seen are based on apps. Totally digital. There was this case of Lidl that was presented in the white paper and also they, it’s in Italy too. They have introduced their loyalty scheme here and I think, you know, rethinking about all the possibilities given by new touchpoints and digital could be a way to refresh. Exercises that have been done many years ago. 

On other sides, and I’m coming to the third point that you wanted. There are some aspects of loyalty schemes in Italy that are actually leading, compared to other countries, for example, a lot of gamification has been introduced. You know, of badges and levels and, challenges, you know, and a lot of attention to sustainability too. 

We’ve done a little piece of research on companies interest in getting the loyalty scheme more geared towards sustainability, and I must say that’s a very big trend. Not only environmental sustainability, I’m speaking also, you know, social sustainability. So that’s another point about Italian loyalty scheme. So, yeah, more or less I would say these are the three things that I like to share. 

Charlie: Yeah, I think that’s such an interesting view of that market cause you almost sit, you know, we rank the loyalty gauge just Lidl’s almost, you know, dead in the middle of all the 24 markets in terms of membership appeal and impact, and that level. And it’s really lovely to see that. That differential between the historic programs that have been around needing to innovate, but then also some programs, you know, really leading the way. 

I know you do a lot of research in sustainability. I loved your speech at The Loyalty Summit in Zurich and some really kind of great case studies in there.

What are sort of some of the best examples you’re seeing of this big trend in loyalty? You know, who’s doing interesting things in that space of sustainability that others should be looking up and learning from? 

Cristina: Oh, well, let’s see. I have done this piece of research collecting case studies, internationally. So I, on purpose, I didn’t focus on Italian schemes because that was the idea of looking to best in class abroad. And presenting the cases to the Italian audience. So, well, there are just many that come to my mind. Maybe one example that I like to cite because it’s very comprehensive is L’Occitane, which is a French Retail chain in the beauty, you know, in cosmetics area. 

Charlie: Yeah. Wonderful hand cream. Wonderful hand cream. 

Cristina: Alright. And it really, I think it’s, it was worth studying that case because, they had, 360 degrees approach. They restyled the stores to make them more sustainable. They have all this recycling training, you know, so people can take their pots, empty bottles there and fill them again so that they save plastic. 

In the store, you can take the carbon footprint test, which is a very interesting thing because consumers, if they’re interested, they can take this test. And of course, you know this way, you get people involved in the idea, but you also collect data about your customers. And if I then use that piece of information for segmenting them, for analyzing them, that gets into a virtual circle.

And also what they do, they design products with suppliers in order to have new products that are sustainable and they sell them online and every month, if I’m not wrong, the products that sold all the revenue from that specific product goes to charity. Charity that’s chosen by the company, the employees, the consumers together. And they also have a scheme for the employees to get involved into sustainability, donating part of their salary to a charity, charitable course. 

So, I liked it. I like to present that case, because I thought it was comprehensive. Otherwise, you know, today that sustainability is such a big trend, there is a risk of greenwashing.

And although companies now know the perils of this, but with loyalty schemes, I think you cannot really add some sustainability to it. It should be rethought, you know, thoroughly. 

Charlie: Yeah. I think that holistic alignment with the whole business is so critical, isn’t it? You can’t sort of operate as an island within an organization.

I think that integration has actually come up quite a lot in a lot of the conversations in the podcast, actually about making sure that the loyalty is kind of baked into the DNA of the business, and that applies to a sustainability policy, but also to employee practices and kind of throughout.

Are there any other sort of really good programs at the moment that you’d call out to our listeners? I know we can’t talk about favorites, but some of the best programs that we are thinking of, or ones that you think really sort of stand out for a particular reason? 

Cristina: Well, you know, let me go back to the three cases that I commented upon in the white paper. One is Nia from the utility industry, and that’s very much around sustainability, that we’ve commented upon before. The interesting thing in there is that it’s totally digital, and again, it has a lot of real life events to get people involved. Not in non-digital environment, in real life environment to engage consumers, to engage employees again. So that’s one interesting case. 

Another interesting case in the fast moving consumer goods space is Lavazza. You know, the coffee industry has a lot of competition. You know, there are big loyalty activities in coffee field, though maybe not in Italy, but there’s a lot of attention on that. And, one specific point of that program is that they were also developing a side program for baristas, I mean, for the people in the coffee shop.  And it’s a little bit of a point that’s very dear to me, involving the people, involving the employees, not only consumers. 

Actually, little bit of a spoiler. The research that we are launching next week on Italian companies and their loyalty strategy is about the employee onboarding practices that they adopt to make people ambassadors of the companies, a lot of program to make employees ambassadors because you know, nobody knows about what companies do in terms of involving internally, you know, people. So I’m trying to tap a little bit into that. 

Charlie: Oh, that’s such an interesting topic cause you talk about it in the white paper as a twin app, don’t you?

It’s almost the, there’s the consumer facing program and then the employee facing program. And it’s a question we get asked a lot actually, when we are launching a new program. You know, what’s the right thing to do for employees and in particular, how do you unite the whole company behind it?

I think the hotel industry has always been really quite good at that in terms of, you know, you go in the hotel estates and you see the ambassadors, don’t you, for the program, but perhaps in other sectors it’s not been so developed and actually maybe it’s a, can sometimes be a little bit of an afterthought.

So, yeah, I’m really looking forward to seeing that. That’s a really interesting question. case study that you talked about?

Cristina: The third case is a very interesting one that came to my attention this year. And that’s in the space of sporting goods. It’s a company, Italian company called Cisalfa.

And, what they do, they transformed very carefully their program, which was, only based, let’s say on vouchers, they made it into a subscription based loyalty scheme, which is absolutely a novelty in the retail space in Italy by studying carefully, you know, the threshold of spending of the customer. They decided on the amount for the fee and then, you know, you are kind of reimbursed for this fee by getting vouchers again, by getting, you know, tickets for sporting events and getting involved in local sports activities.

So, I really liked that program. I had a peek into what they do as far as segmentation and CRM. Thanks to the company presenting the case to my students in the university.  So, that it really struck my eye. That’s why I mentioned their case.

Charlie: Yeah, that’s three really nice examples across, you know, utilities, FMCG, and sports as well.

And I think that’s one of the big trends that we’ve seen, isn’t it, is the rise of loyalty and loyalty thinking and loyalty marketing across a broader range of sectors, you know, 15, 20 years ago when you started the, well, 24 years ago when you started the observatory, I’m sure it was very much more, you know, travel airlines and grocery, and now it’s really exploded.

Are you seeing, sort of any other new ideas or innovations or anything else coming out from other programs that you think our listeners should have a lookout for? 

Cristina: That’s a good question. Well, there has been last year a lot of analysis and experimentation with NFTs and the Metaverse. Then as it happens very often with new technology, companies slow down. Everybody takes a break. Let’s see where it goes. But then I think it will gain momentum again. So now we’re kind of in a moment of rethinking of this. So it’s not as popular as it was last year to talk about these two things.

But you know, if we go back five years, the same happened with the blockchain. You know, it was a high point, then it disappeared, and now we are seeing the real, you know, solid things like, you know, building the infrastructure and maybe the new developments are not what they looked five years ago, totally different.

And so probably we’ll see a lot in the virtual spaces, you know, in the future. And of course, the second thing is very much hidden to the eye is the massive adoption of new algorithms. For, you know, making loyalty schemes and recommendations and personalized coupons more effective based on, let’s call it artificial intelligence that is, you know, algorithm that actually improve all the time.

So I think there’s a lot of adoption of that in segmentation. For example, we don’t see it, but hopefully consumers see it in terms of things that are more tailored to their preferences and their needs. So I think that’s a backup office innovation also. 

Charlie: It’s a really interesting area, isn’t it? And how we apply it well, and how we use it smartly and manage the levels of it. We’ve certainly been looking at machine learning for quite some time, with some of the programs that we work on, and sometimes it’s worked brilliantly and sometimes, you know, it’s a really challenging area to develop. 

We see the same thing in Britain actually in the research that we do, in our market. You know, Brits are quite cautious about innovation. You know, actually only sort of, you know, about one in 10 is like, oh yeah, I’m interested in kind of new and exciting things. They want those more tried and trusted mechanics coming through.

But then when a big program innovates and creates something wonderful, then actually everybody jumps on the bandwagon. And one of the big things that we’ve seen in Britain in the last sort of few years has been the rise of the subscription model. So we had Amazon Prime obviously, and then we’ve had Tesco Clubcard Plus come in as the kind of, you know, the paid for kind of premium tier of the loyalty program and lots of brands have been experimenting in that space.

Is that something that you’re seeing in Italy, at all rise? And I know we’ve talked about, in the sports sector, but are other sectors looking at that as well? 

Cristina: Oh well, we asked that question in last year’s research effort, and I was surprised to see that subscription was not at all something that companies were looking into.

You know, we had covered a topic in yearly conference presenting the trend has a very strong trend, especially in the US for example. But, somehow the companies that responded to our survey, they were not seeing that on your horizon. So I’m going to ask the same question this year. 

So we see if something has changed, you know, maybe one point. I mean, I don’t think it will come up very high on the list because with consumer prices rising with inflation last year, people have become more conscious of the money they spent and the idea of being, you know, tied in quotes, to, you know, spending money regularly every month for something, psychologically, maybe something that’s not resonating with people. So, I don’t know if things will change, but I don’t see subscription becoming big this year.

Charlie: It’s fascinating, isn’t it? Cause a couple of years ago it was such a hot topic and now it’s sort of drifting. 

Cristina: That’s right. 

Charlie: But we are now seeing those experiments come to life in our markets. And Marks and Spencer’s Sparks have just tried one and we’re interested to see if it’s takes off and if it actually kind of lands with consumers, because we’ve got a very value driven market at the moment. I know you’ve talked about the cost of living increases in Italy as well.

So one of the big innovations we’ve seen in the last six months in the British market is the Tesco Clubcard pricing. That’s come in and now we’re seeing other programs kind of launch similar versions of it where actually people who are members of the loyalty program get a lower price than others.

You know, a sort of a variable pricing model has that come into the Italian market yet, is that something that you think programs will be exploring? 

Cristina: Well, I think so. I mean, as far as supermarkets are concerned, basically loyalty schemes in supermarkets look very, very similar one to the other. And, they usually are point based and people use the points, you know, to get coupons or to get a physical object, you know, from a catalog.

And another thing to stimulate regular use of the card is that, on average, a few hundreds items in the store and online are discounted for members only. That has been the case for many, many years. So today I think companies are looking into bringing more items into the basket that’s discounted co-members.

This also will help sustain the penetration of the loyalty cards, you know, to cover, you know, data, in a better way. And, also there’s one thing that’s still very popular in Italian retailing, food retailing is the promotional leaflets. The yeah, the circular as they call it in the states. And yeah, that’s very, very common still. 

A lot of companies are moving it to digital, but we still see both the paper one and the digital one, and that’s another area where we are going to see more discounts on the weekly flyer being for members only. I mean, I think companies are really now understanding that one way to protect people spending power is to protect members spending powers first. And, and so yes, I think we are going to see more of that. 

Charlie: That’s really interesting, isn’t it? I think one of the things I particularly like in the grocery sector is when they manage to combine the sustainability objective with the value objective, and I think that’s where a lot of the industry is looking at the moment, isn’t it?

How can you address those two things together? There’s a really good example, in the Lidl Plus program where actually if you’re a Lidl Plus member, in our market, you can get either a free or a discounted bakery item at the end of the day. So that really helps with food wastage, but it’s also great for value.

My 11 year old son is completely addicted. He’s like, he only wants to go to the supermarket at the end of the day because there’s nothing in his mind quite like the donuts or the pretzels that, you know, we get for the treat in the car on the way home. And sure, it’s really created a new habit in our family, of how we go to the supermarket.

And it’s brought a little bit of joy and a little bit of sustainability and quite a lot of value, and made a really kind of nice extra experience that I never, ever would’ve thought of would be part of our, you know, our supermarket shopping experience. I’m really looking forward to seeing what other programs do in that area. It feels a bit like the holy grail we’re all looking for at the moment. 

Are there any other sort of ideas or innovations? We’ve covered loads, I’m sure our listeners are currently Googling lots of programs they want to go and check out, but is there anything else you’ve seen recently that really stood out to you or that you think we should share?

Cristina: Well, let’s see. Rather than something that I’ve seen, it’s,a scientific curiosity, that I’m going to cover also in this year research effort, which is, how well are schemes geared towards the demographic generations that are going to be the leading consumer groups in the future? To put it in another way, you know, generations like, you know, generation Z or millennials, you know, and the alpha that are very small now.

They’re going to be, you know, or this, they already are, you know, the main building block of company revenue in many industries. So my question is, how is your loyalty effort geared to appeal to that generation specifically? Because my idea is that, you know, different generations react differently to loyalty effort.

They have different preferences for loyalty structures, loyalty rewards, touch points. And this is all academically based, you know? So we know this, but then when it comes to how the scheme works, also because some schemes have been developed years ago. They live with a structure that was built for baby boomers or for my generation.

So, this how are companies addressing this if they are so generation and loyalty schemes is my new question. And I think that’s interesting to look into. 

Charlie: It’s fascinating, isn’t it? When you think about what programs will look like. You see how much change we’ve seen in the last 20 years, you know how much change there’ll be in another 20.

We’ve got all different sorts of programs taking very different approaches to that. So we, in our market, we’ve got some programs actually creating a separate program for a younger, more digitally savvy, more instant gratification driven audience. We’ve got other programs creating clubs within their programs.

We’ve got some people changing their entire program to fit that demographic. So I think it’s something that everyone’s wrestling with actually at the moment. And again, that plays back to that sustainability point as well about, you know, things that we’re doing and, and thinking for the, the future generations about how they’re gonna use it, but also what it’s gonna do for people on the planet. that’s a really interesting question. I’m looking forward to seeing what you find. 

I’m sure a lot of people listening are thinking, gosh, there’s a lot of other questions I’ve got for Cristina, both about the Italian market, but about the broader research that you do and the conferences that I know you’ve got planned. How can our listeners reach out to you if they have questions? What’s the best way to find you? 

Cristina: Okay, so LinkedIn Osservatorio Fedeltà, that’s our page or, our website, again, Osservatorio Fedeltà, which is Loyalty Observatory. Or they can just Google me up, Cristina Ziliani Osservatorio Fedeltà and they’ll easily reach me on my university email address. And I’ll be very happy to get in touch. 

Charlie: Oh, wonderful. Thank you. And we’ll include those links, obviously in the notes that are there with the podcast for anyone that’s thinking, oh, how am I gonna find her on LinkedIn? So please get in touch, please ask more questions. Thank you so much for your time Cristina. 

It’s been absolutely fascinating learning more about Italian loyalty, but also  those broader themes and those broader subjects on sustainability and innovation that we’ve covered. So thank you ever so much for your time today, and goodbye from Let’s Talk Loyalty. 

Cristina: Thank you, Charlie. I really, really my pleasure to be with you today. Thank you for having me.

Paula: This show is brought to you by the Australian Loyalty Association. The leading organization for loyalty professionals in Asia Pacific. Visit their news and content hub for the latest loyalty insights from around the world or why not submit your own article for publication? 

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