Poles have their favorite retail chains or gas stations. Where is loyalty most difficult?

It turns out that it is difficult to loyalize Poles to one specific food retail chain. The vast majority say that they remain faithful to 2-3 favorite chains, a little less have 3 or more favorite grocery chains. Poles show the greatest loyalty towards petrol stations. Almost every Pole has loyalty program cards, which does not mean that he uses them.

Contents

Are Poles loyal customers? Not necessarily
What do loyalty programs give and are we willing to use them?

It turns out that we are relatively faithful to grocery retail chains (9% of respondents point to one, and 49% to up to 3 favorites), as well as household appliances and electronics brands (7% of us have one, and 44% mention 2 or 3 preferred ones) – according to a study by the Inbound Institute Marketing, carried out in February 2023 by SW Research.

We tend to be faithful to streaming services, 11 percent. definitely points to one, and 40 percent. out of 2 to 3 chosen more willingly than others. At the same time, every fourth Pole surveyed declares that he has one favorite network of petrol stations to which he returns, regardless of how attractive the competition’s offer is.

In turn, we are the least attached to clothing brands. Only 5% of consumers declare loyalty to one brand in this category. of those surveyed, 20 percent say that they do not have a favorite brand, and 37% that they have more than 3. Consumer loyalty is correlated not only with the product category, but also with the age and education of consumers.

– Those from Generation Z (16-24 years old) more often diversify their loyalty, pointing to more than 3 favorite brands in a given category. Representatives of the Silver Generation, in turn, are the least likely to be loyal to any particular brand. At the other extreme are people with the lowest education who find it easiest to identify one brand as the preferred one in a given area – comments Piotr Zimolzak from SW Research.

There is a temptation to attribute a high level of loyalty to petrol stations to loyalty programs, because they are brands
from this category were the first to introduce them to Poland on a massive scale. This would also be confirmed by consumer declarations: 40 percent of respondents mention the loyalty program as a strongly loyalizing element. However, having a loyalty program is not a guarantee of success per se.

As Dominik Olejko, Head of Research and Customer Engagement in Eastern Europe at H&M, emphasizes, “a once-designed loyalty program that we will not adapt to the expectations of consumers and the market has no reason to exist”.

– It has to evolve. Also, discounts as a loyalty tool can become a double-edged swordbecause they weaken the strength of the brand in the long term, he explains.

Only 7 percent of respondents do not belong to any loyalty program, which does not mean, however, that the rest actively use them. 4 out of 10 respondents declare that belonging to several programs, actively uses their offer. The rest use them selectively (31%), or even only one (9%). On the other hand, 31 percent of the respondents indicated that their loyalty to brands is influenced by positive opinions of other customers.