Loyalty Programs as Consumer Demand Factor (the Case of Healthy Food Retail Stores)

The issue of choice and decision was one of the fundamental issues in Economics for a long time. Not only scientific research is built around it, but also the strategies of all companies are trying to guess what choice their buyer will make. In the modern world, the relationship between the consumer and the manufacturer takes on a new aspect that was previously not given enough attention – emotional interaction with the buyer. Manufacturers ' attention has switched from strategies for improving product quality and reducing its price to establishing emotional relationships with consumers. This is why loyalty programs are attracting more and more attention, because they are one of the easiest and most popular ways to establish the customer's attachment and loyalty to the store. Despite the fact that loyalty programs are now implemented in many stores around the world, they do not work as effectively. Currently, the sphere of healthy food is just beginning to develop in Moscow, represented in particular by health food stores. The number of such stores is constantly growing, and it is becoming more important for Russians to choose healthy and eco-friendly products for everyday consumption and use. Therefore, such questions as how to retain a customer and increase their demand for the store's products, which loyalty programs work for the audience of these stores, what is the structure of demand factors for customers of these stores, how to develop the most effective loyalty program in this area, are of great concern to companies from this business area. In the course of this work, the following tasks were completed: 1. the structure of consumer demand factors was identified. 2. the contribution of loyalty programs to the structure of consumer demand factors was determined using a consumer survey and regression analysis. 3. recommendations have been Developed to improve the effectiveness of loyalty programs for retail chains that distribute healthy food products. This work was performed using the following methods:an online survey was conducted in April 2020 among residents of Moscow, with 224 respondents. All respondents are customers of the health food store chain (people who have purchased the products of the Vkusvill health food store chain at least once in the past month). Using the obtained data, a regression analysis was performed: a logarithmic model of two specifications was constructed, the estimates of which were evaluated using the least squares method. For each of the specifications, tests were performed to meet all the Gauss-Markov prerequisites in order to make sure that the resulting estimates are unbiased, effective, and the model itself is stable, reliable, and of high quality. During the analysis, conclusions were obtained about the structure of consumer demand factors for the products of health food stores and it was revealed which loyalty programs are more effective than others. Based on these findings, recommendations were developed for companies working in this area. The significance of this work consists not only of the practical aspect - to help stores find answers to these questions, analyze their marketing strategy using the results of this work, refine the weaknesses of existing loyalty programs and develop new, more effective ones, but also of the theoretical aspect – to develop scientific knowledge about consumer loyalty, how consumers form their demand and how they perceive the company's value offer.