Biometric Loyalty Program

Loyalty is a very interesting process. How do you drive people’s behavior to make them more loyal to your service or product? This is especially complicated in healthcare. For example, how do you encourage people to visit your pharmacy more often without incenting them to fill prescriptions unnecessarily. How do you encourage people to use your ER versus another ER without discouraging them from going to their primary care physician? Aligned incentives is a problem that HR and performance management consultants have worked on for years. It isn’t easy.

I was intrigued by another article in Chain Store Age (July 2007, pg. 150) about Green Hills Market in NY. This is a small, $18M company which is using technology from Pay By Touch to take their loyalty program to the next level of personalization by introducing biometrics.

• No more need to carry a card.
• The ability to know use by family member.

It seems to work. Participants are shopping more often and spending more. After they scan in at the front of the store, they get personalized promotions based on their shopping habits. They are getting supply chain efficiencies and improving cross-selling.

I also found it interesting that the author pointed out that at many stores you could scan any loyalty card and get the discounts. As she pointed out, this makes some of the data suspect.