Escaping the loyalty plateau report
Delta and United launched their own programs in the same year, and the space saturated quickly. Eventually, the airlines found ways to evolve their loyalty programs with tiered membership and bank partnerships, but the window where loyalty alone drove differentiated behavior had already closed. That lifecycle has repeated itself across retail ever since. What begins as a differentiator becomes table stakes — not something that moves the needle, but just something consumers expect to see. When every competitor offers a similar program, enrollment grows but impact stalls.