Emotional loyalty is real but badly measured

The argument

Across 217 programmes profiled, 214 have known tier status, and 112 of those run tiers. The distribution is stark: all 61 airlines and all 18 hotels run tiers, while 0 of 18 grocery and 0 of 12 fuel programmes do. Tiers are the industry's most visible loyalty mechanism, but they measure spend and status, not emotional attachment. A member can earn top tier through corporate travel and feel no personal loyalty, while a deeply attached occasional customer remains unrecognised. This gap is the core of the problem.

The sector pattern reinforces the point. Airlines and hotels depend on high-value repeat travellers, so they build tier ladders to lock in spend. Grocery and fuel, where purchases are frequent but lower value per trip, do not. That is a commercial decision about segmentation, not a statement about where emotional loyalty lives. A shopper can be emotionally loyal to a grocery chain and receive nothing beyond points, while a business traveller with no affection for an airline can hold elite status. The measurement follows the money, not the feeling.

Even the technology market compounds the failure. Of 87 vendors profiled, only 48 publish full or partial pricing. Buyers cannot easily compare the tools that claim to measure engagement, attachment, or advocacy. If the measurement technology is opaque, programmes are left with the blunt instruments they already use: recency, frequency, monetary value, and tier attainment. Emotional loyalty is real, because customers do form attachments that survive price increases and inconvenience, but the available counts from 217 profiled programmes record only tier status. They count tiers, not love.

The strongest counter-argument

The best case against this position is that tier status is a valid proxy for emotional loyalty. Customers who chase a tier invest more than money; they invest identity, effort, and attention. Reaching a tier often requires choosing one airline or hotel over cheaper alternatives, which is a behavioural signal of attachment. Under this view, the 112 programmes running tiers are already measuring emotional loyalty indirectly. The count of tier adoption is not evidence of measurement failure but of measurement success through revealed preference. The problem is not that emotional loyalty goes unmeasured; it is that operators do not read their own tier data as emotional data. This is a serious challenge because it uses the same facts to reach the opposite conclusion, and it explains why so many programmes continue to invest in tiers despite the measurement critique.

What would change our mind

We would change our mind if a single programme published a tier qualification rule that uses an explicit emotional measure, such as an attachment score or advocacy intent, independent of spend and frequency, and then demonstrated that this measure predicted retention better than spend alone in a public comparison. Specifically, if that programme showed that members who score high on emotional attachment but low on spend are more likely to remain active than high spenders with low attachment, the claim that emotional loyalty is badly measured would collapse. The observation must be public and repeatable, not a private vendor claim. Until then, the absence of such a measure in any of the 217 profiled programmes stands.

What follows if we are right

If emotional loyalty is real but badly measured, programme operators should stop treating tier counts as evidence of attachment. The first programme to instrument emotional measures directly will be able to identify the members who are most likely to defect for emotional reasons, even when their spend is low, and reward them before they leave. That changes retention economics: you stop subsidising high spenders who are already locked in and start investing in emotionally attached members who are at risk. The practical consequence is to build measurement that separates habit from love, then allocate benefits accordingly.