Gap, since its starting days, has always tried to attract and retain existing as well as potential customers. In its nascent stage, it resorted to playing jazz music in the stores, which became a hit tactic of that time. Playing jazz aided in luring customers towards the stores. The customers who once shopped at Gap, could not afford to look back.
What is a Loyalty Program?
Loyalty Programs are associated with Marketing. These are organised marketing strategies formulated to encourage customers to keep shopping from a particular store or brand as the case may be. Each company or brand has a different loyalty program depending on factors like goods dealt in, customer crowd, frequency of repeat purchase, and many more. Hence, companies structure their loyalty program in such a way that covers up all the areas while rewarding customers for their unbreakable trust and loyalty associated with the brand. This is done by analysing the customer database of the company and evaluating the same to conclude as to which program will be suitable.
What is Gap’s Loyalty Program?
By now, it must be crystal clear that today, almost every brand irrespective of the products they offer, have at least one loyalty program if not many. On a similar line, Gap has launched the “Gap Loyalty Program”.
Two of its most commonly used loyalty programs are: –
Earn 1 Point – In this scheme, a customer is entitled to get 1 point credited in his account on every $1 spent as a Gap Good Rewards member on the selective brands of Gap. Customers are required to shop at Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy & Athleta, in order to get that 1 point. Earn 5 Points – To increase the use of the Gap Inc. credit card, Gap has come up with another loyalty program. Under this loyalty program, a customer is entitled to get 5 points credited in his account on every $1 to spend using Gap credit card issued to them by Gap Inc. Customers are required to shop at Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy & Athleta, in order to get that 5 points.
What is the recent change in the Gap’s Loyalty Program?
Gap has recently streamlined its customer Loyalty Reward Program. With the aim of creating the lifetime value and growing the lifetime value of the customer, Gap has simplified both, the Earn 1 Point as well as the Earn 5 Points loyalty reward program so that it becomes easier for customers to collect and redeem the points on any Gap store.
Gap Inc.’s customer loyalty reward program used to be complicated, but now they have brought together all the four brands (which are Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy & Athleta) and integrated the programs of the respective brands into one single loyalty program. Now, customers can redeem the points collected from one or all the four brands in any of the stores. In other words, it does not matter as to from which brand you got the points, you can reclaim the points on any selective Gap store.
What is the need for a Loyalty Program?
If you are a business owner with a wish that you know more about your customers and want to get them to visit your business frequently and increase their purchases with you while imposing a great magnitude of trust and loyalty, then the Loyalty Program is at your rescue. By introducing Loyalty Program, you as a business owner get an effective and efficient way to handle your customer database and encourage repeat business and keep your customers coming back for more.
As far as a customer point of view is concerned, they want some sort of encouragement and reward for not only making repeated purchases from the same vendor or brand but also passing on the positive feedback resulting in increasing the customer base by bringing in the potential customers. In fact, as per a survey, it is being observed that 77% of the customers agree that having a loyalty program with the brand helps them to stay loyal towards that particular brand.
Gap has effectively managed to keep the customers’ contempt with its two well-known reward programs. The American clothing and accessories retailer is prompt when it comes to making alterations in its existing customers’ loyalty reward program to uncomplicate the entire collection and redemption procedure for its customers.
