THE HEART OF LOYALTY
GLOBAL VOICES. REAL CHALLENGES. ACTIONABLE SOLUTIONS.
Insights from thousands of consumers and loyalty practitioners.
INTRODUCTION
In a world moving at the speed of AI, the most durable competitive advantage isn’t technological. It’s psychological.
The behavioral science principals that guide human decision-making don’t fade when a new AI model drops. They become more essential. Understanding what motivates consumers, drives trust, and sustains emotional connection is not a soft discipline. It is the strategic foundation that determines whether any technology investment, including AI, strengthens loyalty or unintentionally undermines it.
Kobie’s “pracademic” lens helps bridge this divide. It’s what sets the Heart of Loyalty Research apart as the most practical, academically rigorous study in the field.
This year’s research elevates two perspectives: consumers and loyalty practitioners. By incorporating both, we’ve mapped where expectations diverge and where they align, so brands can focus on the opportunities that matter most. We also expanded our reach into more European markets to surface critical geographic nuances for the global brands we support.
Last year, we observed that UK consumers demonstrated slightly higher levels of trust and openness to emerging technology; a signal worth examining further as AI becomes an undeniable force in everyday life and customer experience.
We dig deeper into values-aligned emotional loyalty, the motivations behind advocacy and referral behavior, and the role of communitybased strategies in driving more durable engagement. We also analyze the factors that shape consumers’ willingness to share data - a question at the heart of every meaningful personalization strategy.
And we spotlight one of the most urgent reframes for brands today: the growing cost of misalignment between what consumers want and what brands believe they’re delivering.
To address this gap, we outline a clear path to future-proofing your loyalty strategies and roadmap, rooted in psychology principles that won’t just withstand the AI revolution, but help you use it to your competitive advantage.
CONTENTS
Zero-Party Data: What Unlocks Consumer Comfort in Sharing
AI Readiness: Where People Fall on the Adoption Curve and What’s Coming Next
The Impact of Values, Advocacy, and Referral Alignment
Recognition: The Missing Link in Modern Loyalty
Community: The Emergent Loyalty Accelerator
Geographic Nuances: How Culture Shapes Loyalty Perceptions
Collecting zero-party data sounds straightforward in theory: ask customers for data, use it to personalize their experience, and build a stronger relationship. In practice, most brands struggle to get consumers to share meaningfully in the first place.
Common barriers include vague value exchanges, overcomplicated data collection flows, and a tendency to lead with privacy language that, while well-intentioned, doesn’t motivate consumers to share. The result is programs that have the infrastructure for AI-driven personalization, but not the data to
Zero-Party Data: What Unlocks Consumer Comfort in Sharing
fuel it. Even the most advanced AI models can’t deliver meaningful or reliable outcomes without the high-fidelity data loyalty programs are uniquely positioned to capture.
Zero Party Data (ZPD)
Zero-party data (ZPD) is the data consumers willingly share about themselves in exchange for value. Loyalty programs are uniquely positioned to capture this as the most authentic, reliable, high-fidelity customer data that unlocks significant advantages for brands.
In this chapter, we examine what actually drives consumers to share, which factors brands tend to overestimate, and where the clearest opportunities lie for closing the gap between asking and receiving.
The Two Layers of Data Sharing
In the past two Heart of Loyalty studies, we explored what consumers are willing to share, under what conditions, and what incentives make a difference. Last year, we discussed the concept of the privacy calculus effect, or the mental math consumers do before deciding to share and found that trust and control were central to that equation.
This year, we set out to define that equation more concretely. We examined two layers that shape a consumer’s willingness to share data as part of a loyalty program:
The first is the trust layer, which includes data security assurances, clarity around how data will be used, consumer control over what is shared and with whom, context relevance, and the immediacy of impact.
The second is the effort value layer, which includes the level of effort required to share, message relevance, rewards, access to additional benefits, fun or joy, and visible impact on a product or experience.
Consumer agreement across both layers was high. Within the trust layer, 95% said trust was at least somewhat important in their decision to share their data through a loyalty program, 94% wanted control over what they share, 93% wanted the ability to erase their data at any time, and 89% wanted clarity on how their information would be used.
Said trust was at least somewhat important in their decision to share their data through a loyalty program.
Wanted control over what they share.
Wanted the ability to erase their data at any time.
Wanted clarity on how their information would be used.
Within the effort value layer, 81% said seeing an immediate impact of sharing was important, while 73% cited rewards and 72% cited access to additional benefits as key factors.
What Actually Drives Data Sharing
High agreement across so many factors makes prioritization difficult, so we dug deeper to identify which factors were statistically significant in driving a consumer’s comfort level with sharing data in a loyalty context.
The results were surprising. Within the trust layer, only two of the seven factors proved statistically significant: keeping data secure and clarity of data use. Notably, the control variables — the ability to cancel, manage
What This Means for Brands
The Effort Value Layer Drives the Most Willingness to Share Data : When it comes to what actually moves the needle on data sharing comfort, value layer factors outperformed trust layer factors. This challenges the common assumption that privacy controls and transparency alone are enough to earn data sharing. Consumers are most willing to share their data when they get value in return.
what’s shared, and limit third-party access — did not register as statistically significant.
Within the effort value layer, six of the seven factors were significant: ease of sharing, level of effort, relevant messaging, rewards for sharing, access to additional benefits, and visible proof that shared data improved a product or experience.
Across all countries, rewards for sharing emerged as the most dominant driver of comfort, followed by the promise of message relevance and visible data impact on the product or service experience. Trust in the brand, clarity of data use, and ease of sharing followed closely behind.
Across all countries, rewards for sharing emerged as the most dominant driver of comfort.
Make the Value Exchange Obvious:
Consumers are willing to share when the benefit is clear and immediate. Loyalty programs that lead with relevance, rewards, and visible impact are better positioned to earn data sharing than those that rely primarily on privacy assurances. The ask and the payoff should always be in plain sight.
How Geography, History, and Format Shape Data Sharing
The core factors driving data sharing comfort are consistent across geographies, but their relative importance shifts meaningfully by country. While the overall sample surfaced 8 of 14 factors as statistically significant, individual countries registered between 2 and 5 significant factors each, suggesting that the privacy calculus consumers perform is culturally influenced, not universal. The one notable outlier was France, where the ability to erase personal data from a brand’s database emerged as a distinct and critical factor, not statistically significant in any other country surveyed.
“The privacy calculus consumers perform is culturally influenced, not universal.
Two Universal Truths About Data Sharing
Across all countries, two factors rose to the surface with striking consistency.
Past experience predicts future sharing
Of respondents said a positive past experience sharing data makes them more likely to share again in the future.
What This Means for Brands
One Framework, Many Flavors: Global loyalty programs can share a common data strategy, but the factors that earn consumer trust and motivate sharing vary by market. Brands operating across multiple geographies should treat data collection as a localized conversation, not a standardized form.
Past experience predicts future sharing. 71% of respondents said a positive past experience sharing data makes them more likely to share again in the future. This held steady across every country in the study. The implication is direct: when consumers receive relevant messaging, earn rewards, or see their feedback visibly improve a product or experience, that positive outcome compounds. Each good data exchange makes the next one easier.
Volume of the ask matters as much as the ask itself. 81% of respondents said they won’t share information if they feel they’re being asked for too much at once, with no meaningful difference across countries.
How Consumers Prefer to Share
Consumer preference for sharing in small doses shows up clearly in how they engage with different formats.
Consumers are most willing to share via:
• One-time mini-surveys 71%
• Short-form quizzes 64%
Of respondents said they won’t share information if they feel they’re being asked for too much at once, with no meaningful difference across countries.
Asking for too much in a single interaction conflicts directly with the two effort value layer factors that matter most: simplicity and low effort. It also invites skepticism, which erodes trust and makes it harder to clearly explain how data will be used. More data points require more explanation, which raises more questions.
The First Exchange Is the Most Important One
Brands have one early opportunity to demonstrate that sharing data is worth it. A relevant, rewarding, or visibly impactful first experience sets a compounding pattern of willingness. A poor one does the opposite.
• Mini-surveys conducted over time 63%
By integrating gamification, brands can design game mechanics specifically to match these preferences, making short-form data asks more engaging while capturing zero-party data.
Willingness drops with longer-format options like:
• Full profiles 55%
• Preference centers 51%
Fewer Asks, More Trust
Overloading a data collection moment doesn’t just reduce response rates — it actively damages the trust that makes future sharing possible. Treat each data request as a transaction with a cost. Keep it small. Make it contextually relevant. Collect over time.
Consumer Willingness To Share
The Value of Progressive Profiling
The data consumers are willing to give in a single session is limited. Brands that build toward a complete picture gradually, through repeated low-effort exchanges, will consistently outperform those relying on one-time, comprehensive data collection moments.
Results were consistent across countries, with one exception: Spanish respondents showed higher willingness to engage across all sharing formats relative to the overall population.
Kobie’s progressive profiling helps build Panoramic Customer Profiles™ by stitching together transactional, behavioral, emotional, and always-on zero-party data that’s captured over time. These profiles make your personalization system gradually smarter without overwhelming consumers with lengthy data collection tactics.
The Practitioner POV
Practitioners are aligned with consumers on several key data-sharing drivers. 88% say it’s easy for customers to share information, 90% believe their customers trust them to keep data secure, 87% say they provide full clarity on how data will be used, and 79% use shared data to personalize messaging. These are meaningful indicators of a healthy foundation.
But the gaps are telling.
The top driver of consumer comfort with sharing data is rewards, yet only 65% of practitioners actually reward customers for sharing. Relative to how strongly practitioners scored on every other factor, that gap stands out.
The Gap
The top driver of consumer comfort with sharing data is rewards, yet only 65% of practitioners actually reward customers for sharing.
Meanwhile, 80% of practitioners say customers have a say in who their data is shared with, 74% allow customers to delete their data, and 86% give customers control over what they share. These are meaningful capabilities, but consumers have signaled that control factors matter less than effort value factors when it comes to their comfort
in sharing data. If you’re only prioritizing trust factors without providing value, you’re missing the mark on what consumers actually want.
The Trust Paradox
The most revealing finding came from an open-ended question asking practitioners to name their biggest barriers to zero-party data collection. Trust, data privacy, and data security topped the list of barriers to ZPD collection at 30%, yet 90% of those same practitioners said trust wasn’t an issue with their customers. Similarly, the third through fifth most-cited barriers all related to customers finding data sharing difficult, timeconsuming, or contextually intrusive — yet 88% said sharing is easy and 90% said they always provide sound context.
Here we see that two things can be true at once. Practitioners can struggle with these challenges while still feeling good about the progress they’ve made. But the gap between perception and reality is a signal worth paying attention to.
Confidence Can Be a Blindspot
High self-reported scores don’t always reflect the consumer experience. Brands that assume they’ve solved for trust and ease of sharing may be underinvesting in the other factors — rewards, relevance, and visible impact — that actually move consumers to share.
Summary + Next Steps
Consumers are willing to share their data, but the conditions that make them comfortable doing so are more specific than most brands assume. Trust and transparency matter, but they function more as table stakes than as motivators. What actually drives data sharing comfort is the value consumers expect to receive in return: rewards, relevant messaging, and visible proof that their data improved something. Brands that lead with privacy assurances while underdelivering on value are solving for the wrong problem.
Practitioners are closer to the mark than they may realize, but notable gaps remain, particularly around rewards and a tendency to overestimate how seamless and well-contextualized their data collection moments actually are. Closing those gaps requires honest assessment, a shift toward outcome-led data collection, and a commitment to ongoing testing and iteration.
Consider these takeaways as next steps in planning your zero-party data strategies:
1. Lead with value over privacy language. When asking for data, the message that moves consumers most is what they’ll get in return, not how their data will be protected. Loyalty programs have a unique advantage in creating this value exchange with the ability to frame every data collection moment around the expected outcome: better recommendations, relevant rewards, or a product experience shaped by their input.
2. Use your loyalty program as the incentive engine for data sharing. Rewards are the single strongest driver of data sharing comfort, and loyalty programs already carry a foundation of trust built over time. Activating the program as the reward mechanism for sharing data directly
addresses the number one reason consumers feel comfortable sharing, and connects data collection to a relationship consumers have already opted into.
3. Collect less, more often. Consumers are most willing to share through short, low-effort formats like mini-surveys and quizzes. Long-form profiles and preference centers see meaningfully lower engagement. Progressive profiling, building a complete picture through repeated small exchanges, outperforms comprehensive one-time collection both in response rates and in trust.
4. Localize how you ask, not just what you ask. The factors driving data sharing comfort shift by geography. While the overall framework holds across markets, individual countries weight factors differently. Brands collecting zero-party data across multiple geographies should audit their messaging and collection moments by market, and adjust emphasis accordingly.
5. Don’t confuse a good score with a finished job. Practitioners tend to rate themselves highly on trust, ease of sharing, and clarity, yet those same practitioners name trust and friction as their top barriers when asked openly. That disconnect is a signal to keep testing, measuring actual consumer experience rather than assumed experience, and treating zero-party data strategy as a continuous practice rather than a solved problem.
Kobie’s ZPD Strategic Assessment offers a strategic blueprint to help you better understand the value of zero-party data, where and how to collect it, and which specific signals will unlock the most value. This creates line of sight to your ROI and helps prepare your business for activation.
Artificial Intelligence may seem like a modern breakthrough, but the idea has been taking shape for more than 100 years. Early 20th century scientists were exploring the concept of what a “smart machine” could become. So why does it feel so different now?
Because the pace and magnitude of AI’s revolution have fundamentally changed, along with the pressure for brands to keep up. The real question is no longer whether AI is advancing, but whether your customers are advancing with you.
To better understand how AI fits into loyalty today, we examined how consumers perceive
AI Readiness: Where People Fall on the Adoption Curve and What’s Coming Next
it, how familiar they are with it, what truly drives their willingness to use it, and the extent to which practitioners are incorporating it into their customer experience strategies.
Familiarity With AI = Trust in AI
When we asked consumers about their experience with AI in loyalty programs, roughly half had experienced it as part of a personalization strategy. This includes AIgenerated, personalized offers based on past behaviors, deal recommendations within apps, and automated reminders.
Fewer consumers (35%) encountered more advanced uses such as proactive, predictive offers, location-based offers, and AI chatbots. 21% of consumers had an agentic experience where AI takes an action, like making a purchase, on their behalf.
What This Means for Brands
AI Copilots Are Mainstream: This is where you can capture broad value without much friction.
Proactive/Predictive Is the Next Growth Zone: There’s interest, but you need to be thoughtful. Use opt-ins,transparency, and clear benefit framing (save me money/time right now).
Agentic AI Has Cautious Adoption: Let high-trust, high-engagement members try it first. Make it permissionbased with strong safeguards and easy “undo.”
Of consumers said they expect brands to tell them when AI is being used, yet 60% say they are unsure when it is. 86%
As consumers become more familiar with AI, this uncertainty drops. Still, brands need to address the gap through stronger transparency and clearer disclosure. For an AI experience to register as familiar, consumers need to know when AI’s being used.
Trust in AI ≠ intent to adopt AI
We expected intent to adopt AI to increase with trust and decrease with skepticism. We also assumed that consumers with higher tech readiness would be more apt to adopt. The data told a different story.
57% of respondents indicated they are willing to adopt AI in the future, yet neither trust nor technology readiness (measured with a version of Parasuraman’s technology readiness index) showed up as significant drivers. There were also a few geographical nuances. Based on these experiences, we added a familiarity score into our modeling, and the data shows a clear pattern: the more familiar consumers are with AI, the more they trust it, illustrating the exposure effect in action. But familiarity also highlights a gap between what people expect and what they actually experience.
57%
Of respondents indicated they are willing to adopt AI in the future.
Spain reported the highest familiarity with AI applications, followed by the U.S., Germany, and France. Spain also showed the strongest willingness to adopt AI at 68%. When it comes to what actually motivates adoption, countries looked remarkably similar with one exception: social influence. It was a significantly stronger driver in France and Germany.
So, if trust and tech readiness aren’t enough to shape willingness to adopt AI, what does move consumers?
Influencing intent
Consumers pointed to several factors beyond familiarity that shape their willingness to adopt AI, from personal motivation to social influence.
It’s fun and feels smart: The strongest driver was simply wanting to use AI. 46% said they’re intrinsically motivated because it feels fun and exciting, and 51% find AI-powered services genuinely helpful and intelligent.
It makes life easier: Convenience also plays a big role. 41% said AI makes their lives easier, and the same share is open to using chatbots. Even though AI agents are still new, a third of consumers said they’d appreciate an agent helping them during a purchase.
It’s easy to pick up: Ease of learning matters, too. 58% said when AI tools are relatively easy to figure out, it boosts their likelihood of adopting them.
Others are onboard too: Social influence also moves the needle. 39% said they’re more willing to adopt AI when people around them recommend it. A smaller but notable group, 27%, said having AI knowledge helps them feel more accepted in their social circles.
The Practitioner POV
Even though more than half of consumers say they’re willing to use AI, 56% of loyalty practitioners believe their customers aren’t ready. That gap is hard to ignore. We also found that most practitioners use AI for internal efficiencies rather than customerfacing experiences.
The Gap
Even though more than half of consumers say they’re willing to use AI, 56% of loyalty practitioners believe their customers aren’t ready.
68% say AI increases their productivity as marketers, and 67% feel comfortable using it in their daily work. 74% use AI at least once a week, with a third using it daily and another 27% using it several times a week.
Practioners say
But adoption drops sharply when the use case shifts to marketing or customer experience. Only 36% use AI for content or creative generation, and levels drop from there.
This hesitation stands in contrast to consumer openness. It reflects a basic psychological principle: we trust what we understand and question what we don’t.
Looking ahead, though, the picture changes. 68% of practitioners say their companies plan to increase AI use over the next 12 to 24 months. The biggest expected jumps are in dynamic rewards (up 58%), customer journey orchestration (up 55%), real-time personalization or messaging (up 45%), and using AI to enrich customer data (up 41%).
“We trust what we understand & question what we don’t.
Summary + Next Steps
AI may feel new, but its rapid evolution has made its impact more visible and urgent. Our research shows that while familiarity strongly increases consumer trust in AI, trust alone doesn’t predict whether people will adopt it. Instead, intrinsic motivation, ease, usefulness, and social influence are key drivers of adoption. Despite more than half of consumers expressing intent to use AI, many practitioners underestimate this readiness and primarily use AI for internal efficiencies rather than customer-facing experiences. Looking ahead, practitioners expect significant growth in AI applications across personalization, dynamic rewards, and customer journey orchestration over the next 2 years.
Consider these takeaways as next steps in planning your AI strategies:
1. Stop waiting for “customer readiness” - it’s already here. 56% of loyalty practitioners believe their customers aren’t ready for AI, yet 57% of consumers say they’re already willing to use it. That’s a self-imposed limit to your growth. If your AI roadmap is stalled because of assumed customer hesitation, that assumption needs to be revisited now.
2. Use transparency as a trust mechanic. 86% of consumers expect brands to disclose when AI is being used, but 60% can’t tell when it is. Proactive disclosure (i.e. “this offer was personalized for you using AI”) isn’t just ethical hygiene. It’s a competitive differentiator that drives deeper adoption over time.
3. Lead with “easier and more useful”, not “innovative”. The biggest driver of AI adoption isn’t tech readiness, it’s intrinsic utility. Consumers want AI that saves them time and money. Frame personalized offers around what the member gains, not around the sophistication of the engine behind it.
4. Design your AI adoption curve in tiers. The data maps cleanly to a staged rollout strategy. Assistive AI (personalized offers, reminders) is mainstream and low-friction, so deploy broadly. Predictive and proactive AI (location-based, anticipatory offers) is the growth zone. Use opt-ins and clear value framing. Agentic AI is coming, so pilot it with your highest-engagement, highest-trust members first with strong safe guards. Don’t try to bring everyone to the same place all at once.
5. Leverage social influence for AI adoption. If members are more likely to adopt AI features when people around them are using them, then surfacing social proof, peer reviews of AI features, and communitybased adoption campaigns become legitimate growth strategies.
Kobie’s Data, Tech and AI Enablement solution helps brands embed AI into the places and processes that matter most, while building the technical foundation required for responsible, future-proof loyalty. We create the readiness, automation, and intelligence layers brands need to move faster, operate smarter, and unlock modern efficiencies.
Today, brands face complexity in understanding how consumer values impact loyalty. On one hand, polarization has pushed people to scrutinize corporate stances more closely than ever. On the other, the rise of algorithm-driven shopping, subscription bundles, and aggregate services has distanced consumers from the decisionmaking process. This tension between loudly stated values and silently automated behaviors raises a question brands must confront: does values alignment still meaningfully influence loyalty when convenience can win by default?
The Impact of Values, Advocacy, and Referral Alignment
While Kobie’s proprietary Emotional Loyalty Scoring (ELS®) serves as our grounding methodology for understanding what motivates customers to be loyal, this year we brought values congruency into the equation to help answer this question.
Simply stated, values congruency is the degree to which one’s own values align in occurrence and intensity with the perceived values that a brand has or espouses.
To measure this, we looked at six core values:
• Honesty
• Humility
• Responsibility
• Daringness or adventurousness
• Creativity
• Environmental protection
Participants were asked to rate how important these values were to their daily lives, identify the brands they are loyal to, and then determine how closely those brands reflect the same set of values. We then compared responses to create a values congruency measure to help us further analyze sentiment around advocacy, referral, and in a later section, community-based loyalty strategies.
Understanding Advocacy and Referral
To explore this, we used a scale designed to measure the strength of advocacy (Sweeney et al., 2020) and applied Rasch modeling to segment consumers into:
• Power advocates: High frequency, high-intensity advocates who actively persuade others to try or use the brand. Think of this group as your superfans.
At Kobie, we see referral as a behavior, while advocacy is a mindset. Advocates will typically refer others to a brand, but not everyone who refers is an advocate. From an emotional loyalty perspective, advocates are more deeply invested: they’re proven to be less likely to defect, more forgiving of service failures, and more likely to demonstrate extrarole behaviors beyond spending.
Advocacy also isn’t binary - there are levels.
• Conditional advocates: Their advocacy is supportive but situational. They offer positive recommendations when asked but are not as proactive as power advocates.
• PWOMers: Those simply engaging in positive word-of-mouth (PWOM). They engage in positive, low-effort brand mentions but lack the conviction of advocates.
We then examined how each group participates in various advocacy behaviors to better understand what distinguishes them.
When thinking about a brand they’re loyal to, respondents showed high willingness to participate in advocacy-related activities or behaviors, from written testimonials, to speaking on customers panels, to posting on
social media, etc. Their willingness to do so increased as their strength of advocacy rose.
• 72% said they would refer others to a brand with no incentive
• 68% said they would distribute sample products supplied by the brand
• 67% indicated they would update a past negative review if the experience improved
• 68% said they would be willing to refer someone through a link or form
This may seem obvious, but the size of the difference between stronger and weaker advocates underscores the importance of understanding and cultivating the advocacy mindset.
The Intersection with Values
We specifically looked at the power advocates segment and found that respondents who had high values congruency
with a brand were significantly more likely to be power advocates. They were also significantly more willing to exhibit all of the advocacy behaviors we asked about. In some cases, the percentage of power advocates with high congruence willing to exhibit advocacy behaviors exceeded 90%.
Of power advocates with high values congruence are willing to exhibit advocacy behaviors.
Understanding to what degree your power advocates align with your brand values matters because this segment is the most highly motivated to promote your brand in meaningful, tangible ways. Most will refer others, share samples, update past negative reviews or complete referral actions without incentives, creating no-cost promotional opportunities for brands.
Values Congruency by Advocacy Segment: How Alignment Predicts Advocacy Strength
“This may seem obvious, but the response variance between stronger and weaker advocates underscores the importance of understanding and cultivating the advocacy mindset.
Across countries, the trends largely remained the same in terms of which behaviors respondents would be willing to exhibit, but the degree of willingness to exhibit those behaviors differed.
In general, Spanish respondents over-indexed in their willingness to exhibit advocacy behaviors in some cases by over 25%. German respondents saw the opposite trend and under-indexed the entire population on average by 13%. The remaining countries largely mirrored the overall population in terms of their willingness to exhibit advocacy behaviors.
The Practitioner POV
To gauge practitioners’ familiarity with advocacy and referral, we began by asking whether they recognized a difference between the two. Most did, with only 16% considering them interchangeable. Respondents generally view referral as more incentivized and transactional. As one respondent put it,
“Advocacy as a marketing strategy is more authentic and focused on long-term brand loyalty.”
Some drew the distinction further, equating referral with acquisition and advocacy with loyalty and retention. Opinion was more divided on which is more effective.
Proponents of referral cited its measurability and directness; proponents of advocacy pointed to its genuineness and authenticity.
Practioners on Their Current Strategies
Have a referral strategy, most of which reward both the referrer and referee. 68%
Agree their referral strategies have worked well. 73%
Consider referral and advocacy central to their loyalty strategy. 75%
Despite broad agreement on the value of both strategies, practitioners are divided on where referral “lives” within an organization. Only 35% place it within retention or loyalty marketing, with the remainder split across other functions.
Where Referral Lives Within Practitioner Organizations
Some other part of the organization I’m not sure Digital Marketing Product Marketing Retention or Loyalty Marketing Performance Marketing Acquisition Marketing
What This Means for Brands
Advocacy and referral together strengthen retention strategy. 76% of practitioners see both as central to their loyalty strategy, yet organizational structure rarely reflects that. When either lives in acquisition or performance marketing, it risks being mischaracterized as a top-funnel tactic, optimized for conversion rather than connection. When they live in loyalty, they’re recognized for what they actually are: powerful relationship accelerators that contribute to loyalty’s primary KPI, CLTV. Practitioners should audit where these programs currently sit and make the case internally for moving them under the loyalty and retention umbrella.
Advocacy and referral in loyalty strategy
Of practitioners see both as central to their loyalty strategy, yet organizational structure rarely reflects that.
Where to Focus
To better understand which advocacy and referral tactics deserve the most attention, we compared two viewpoints: how willing consumers are to engage in specific advocacy behaviors, and how effective loyalty marketers believe those same behaviors are.
Referral Behaviors: Consumer Willingness vs. Marketer Perceived Effectiveness
ReferViaLinkUpdateReviewGiveaTestimonialSpeakwithNewParticipateinaPanelShareinfoonSocialReferw/oRewardCreateBrandContentBecomeSocialInfluencerDistributeSamples
% of Consumers Willing to Exhibit Behavior
% of Loyalty Marketers Indicating It’s Effective
When both numbers are high, it signals a strong opportunity: these are the behaviors consumers are ready to act on and marketers see as impactful. The graph shows that traditional referral activities, prosocial referrals, testimonials, and participation in panels all sit in this sweet spot. These should be priority tactics because they combine high consumer willingness with strong marketer confidence.
In contrast, marketers tend to rate social-forward behaviors, like creating branded content, sharing on social feeds, or becoming influencers, as effective, but consumers show low willingness to
participate in them. These activities may require more effort or incentives to gain traction.
The Gap
Marketers tend to rate social-forward behaviors, like creating branded content, sharing on social feeds, or becoming influencers, as effective, but consumers show low willingness to participate in them.
Summary + Next Steps
Here we explore how values congruency (how closely a consumer’s personal values align with a brand’s values) intersects with emotional loyalty, advocacy, and referral behaviors. Consumers with high values congruency are significantly more likely to become power advocates and to engage in a wide range of advocacy behaviors, often at levels exceeding 90%. Across markets, advocacy willingness remains directionally consistent, though cultural differences influence magnitude. Practitioner findings reveal that while brands recognize the distinct roles of advocacy and referral, execution varies, and many overlook the stronger impact achieved when both are intentionally integrated within loyalty.
Consider these takeaways as next steps in planning your advocacy and referral strategies:
1. Close the values gap to unlock stronger advocacy. Consumers who see their own values reflected in a brand are significantly more likely to become power advocates, and power advocates are dramatically more willing to exhibit every advocacy behavior measured, sometimes exceeding 90% willingness. Brands that understand and close the values gap with their customers unlock a high-potential, highly motivated segment.
2. Think of advocacy and referral as fundamental loyalty behaviors, not acquisition tactics. While 76% of practitioners view them as core to loyalty
strategy, only 35% actually house these programs within loyalty or retention teams. When they sit under acquisition or performance marketing, they’re optimized for conversion instead of connection, leaving their impact on CLTV undervalued and often overlooked.
3. Referral doesn’t require an incentive to work. 72% of consumers say they’d refer others to a brand with no incentive at all. This challenges the default assumption that referral programs must be transactional to be effective, and reinforces that emotionally loyal customers are already motivated to refer. The right program structure amplifies a behavior that’s already happening.
4. The biggest risk is chasing tactics consumers won’t do. Marketers overestimate the effectiveness of socialforward behaviors like branded content creation and influencer participation, while consumers show low willingness to engage in them. The highest-return tactics, traditional referral, testimonials, and panel participation, are the ones where consumer willingness and marketer confidence actually align. Prioritize those first.
Kobie’s Member Referral Management enables you to manage all aspects of your brand’s approach to using offers, benefits and rewards to grow your member base through customer referral and advocacy.
Loyalty and recognition aren’t interchangeable; they’re interdependent.
Recognition is the act of noticing, accepting, or honoring a person, action, or fact. Loyalty, however, is a strategic effort to grow and retain customers through incentives, personalization, and relationship-building that drives long-term engagement and advocacy.
Today, recognition has become the catalyst that elevates traditional loyalty. Rewards may encourage participation, but true recognition affirms identity, reinforces belonging, and transforms loyalty from a transactional exchange into an emotional connection. In other words, loyalty provides the structure (and the zero-party data) you need to do
Recognition: The Missing Link in Modern
Loyalty
recognition well, but recognition gives it heart, making both essential to building deeper, more enduring customer relationships.
77% of consumers say they want some form of recognition, whether subtle or more noticeable. Yet most feel they aren’t receiving it. Only 55% feel seen as individuals, and just 54% feel they receive personal attention from brands whose loyalty programs they participate in.
Consumers also share recognition experiences when they happen: 70% say they tell others about a truly memorable moment of recognition.
Want some form of recognition, whether subtle or more noticeable.
But only...
Of consumers feel seen as individuals.
Feel they receive personal attention from their loyalty programs.
This gap between expectation and experience represents major opportunity. Brands who elevate their recognition approach position themselves to meet customers in meaningful moments, building memories that fuel lasting engagement. And importantly, recognition doesn’t need to be extravagant—subtle, thoughtful gestures often create the greatest impact.
Subtle vs. Overt Recognition
Among consumers who want recognition, 80% prefer it to be subtle: a quiet gesture, a personalized moment, or an acknowledgment that feels natural within the experience. Only 20% prefer overt recognition, such as public
celebrations or special-treatment perks like dedicated lines. Subtle recognition aligns with values such as respect, fairness, humility, authenticity, and individuality, while overt recognition appeals more directly to the desire to feel special.
Prefer a subtle, quiet gesture or a natural, in-experience moment.
Want overt recognition such as a public celebrat or special-treatment.
What Makes Recognition Memorable?
Across all consumers who want recognition, whether subtle or overt, certain moments stand out. Surprise rewards top the list, with 92% finding them memorable. Birthdays (83%) and tenure milestones (82%) follow closely.
When we compare preferences, a pattern emerges. Consumers who prefer subtle recognition show more selectivity. They gravitate toward personal, relationship-driven moments such as birthdays, tenure, service recovery, and reinforcement of individual
goals. In contrast, those who prefer overt recognition find almost every type of recognition memorable, often up to 25% higher, reflecting a heightened sensitivity to acknowledgment throughout the customer journey. The only exception is disengagement recognition, though even here nearly 70% still find it memorable.
Cross-Cultural Insights
Recognition preferences remain relatively consistent across countries, but a few differences stand out, perhaps due to market maturity.
• Program anniversaries: Consumers in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Canada under in how memorable they find program- anniversary recognition. France and Spain over-index.
• First transaction recognition: France, Spain, and Germany place higher value on being recognized for their first transaction compared to the overall population.
• Disengagement recognition: While generally not considered highly memorable, the U.S., U.K., and Canada under-index, whereas Germany, France, and Spain over-index.
What This Means for Brands
First, invest more in subtle recognition. More than 80% of consumers prefer small, thoughtful gestures over overt displays, making subtle recognition both more effective and more operationally efficient. Quiet moments such personalized messages, authentic acknowledgments, and contextual touches deliver impact without requiring large, complex executions.
Second, make surprise rewards a core part of your recognition strategy. They rank as the most memorable form of recognition across all consumers. Whether delivered through traditional mechanisms or fun, game-based interactions, surprise rewards create emotional lift and stickiness that few other tactics can match.
Consumer Perceptions and Expectations
We also explored how consumers judge the quality of recognition, specifically whether it feels genuine, fair, and tied to rewards.
• 68% say recognition from a loyalty program feels genuine.
• 69% feel the amount of recognition they receive is fair relative to their participation.
• 72% expect a reward when they receive recognition.
Across markets, perceptions of genuineness remain consistent. Fairness follows a similar pattern, with one exception: Germany under-indexes, with fewer consumers feeling the recognition they receive is fair.
Expectations around rewards show more variation. U.S. and U.K. consumers are less likely to believe recognition should come with a reward, while Spain and Germany are more likely to expect recognition and rewards to go hand in hand.
Global consistency in brand experience is important, but this means recognition should be culturally tuned to feel fair, genuine, and motivating.
The Practitioner POV
92% of loyalty practitioners agree that recognizing a customer creates an emotional bond. Most also feel confident in proving its value: 85% say they can measure ROI, and 77% believe they know exactly how to measure recognition’s impact. Yet over half of practitioners (55%) still conflate rewards with recognition.
Recognition vs Rewards
Recognition is an emotional acknowledgment of the customer: who they are, what they mean to the brand, or a meaningful milestone.
Examples: a birthday message, thanking a customer for tenure, acknowledging a goal achieved.
Rewards are tangible value exchanges delivered as part of the loyalty proposition.
Examples: points, discounts, coupons, free items.
And Yet…
Over half of practitioners still conflate rewards with recognition. 55%
Despite recognition’s perceived value, many programs struggle to prioritize it. About 40% cite challenges scaling recognition, and 42% point to operational complexity as a barrier.
When comparing what practitioners deliver today with what consumers find memorable, clear gaps emerge. Surprisingly few practitioners surveyed recognize birthdays, provide surprise rewards, or acknowledge tenure - the top three recognition moments consumers rank as most memorable.
Part of this gap may stem from misalignment: many programs reward these moments without recognizing them. But given that more than half of practitioners equate rewards with recognition, these execution levels should be higher, revealing an untapped opportunity.
Another reason loyalty practitioners may underuse recognition is budget. Our survey revealed no consistent home for recognition funding - and in some organizations, no recognition budget exists at all. When recognition lacks a defined owner or budget
Reward Preferences: What Consumers Want vs. What Brands Say They Deliver
The Gap
Many programs reward these moments without recognizing them. But given that more than half of practitioners equate rewards with recognition, these execution levels should be higher, revealing an untapped opportunity. line, delivering thoughtful, personalized moments becomes far more difficult to operationalize.
Bottom Line:
Recognition needs a clear definition and a dedicated budget to thrive. When practitioners treat recognition as its own loyalty lever, (not just an add-on reward), it becomes easier to scale, more cost-effective, and far more emotionally resonant for customers.
When rewards and recognition are conflated, programs over-rely on monetary value and underinvest in emotional connection. This creates three risks:
1. Overspending on value, underspending on meaning:
Rewards cost more but don’t always deepen loyalty; recognition often creates more emotional lift at lower cost.
2. Operational misalignment:
If recognition is viewed as “just another reward,” it never gets a dedicated budget or owner, making execution inconsistent or deprioritized.
3. Missed emotional impact:
Consumers increasingly expect to be seen, not just compensated. Without recognition, brands lose a key differentiator.
Summary + Next Steps
This chapter highlights the growing importance of recognition as a core driver of emotional loyalty, revealing that consumers overwhelmingly prefer subtle, personal acknowledgment over overt gestures and often consider moments like surprise rewards, birthdays, and tenure milestones most memorable. While consumers are clear about what they value, loyalty practitioners still underdeliver - held back by operational complexity, lack of ownership, inconsistent budgeting, and confusion between recognition and rewards. Global variations further underscore the need for nuanced strategies: expectations for fairness, reward linkage, and celebration differ meaningfully by market. The findings signal a major opportunity for brands to shift from transactional loyalty to emotionally resonant experiences by elevating, clarifying, and properly resourcing recognition efforts.
Consider these takeaways as next steps in planning your recognition strategy:
1. Make recognition a defined loyalty strategy, not an add-on. Build a recognition roadmap with clear owners, KPIs, and moments mapped to the customer lifecycle to intentionally drive emotional loyalty.
2. Prioritize subtle, personalized moments. Shift resources toward lightweight, high-impact gestures like personal notes, contextual acknowledgments, and tailored messages that can be automated and scaled. To do this well, leverage your zeroparty data strategy from Chapter 1.
3. Operationalize the “Big Three” memorable moments. Ensure birthday recognition, tenure milestones, and surprise rewards are built into your program’s core experience, not treated as optional enhancements.
4. Separate recognition from rewards in your program design. Define recognition (emotional acknowledgment) and rewards (tangible value) independently in your playbooks and budgets to avoid overspending on value and underinvesting in meaning.
5. Localize recognition expectations across markets. Adapt recognition intensity, reward linkage, and fairness cues by geography to reflect cultural norms. Test locally and tailor where needed.
Kobie’s Recognition Strategy service helps brand design a recognition system that optimizes monetary and nonmonetary levers to increase perceived value, drive incremental behavior, and reinforce brand value.
Brands today are asking the same questions: How do we create a genuine sense of belonging beyond transactions? Can community actually drive loyalty, or does it feel forced? Where do events, partnerships, and shared identity fit in?
These questions are coming up more than ever, and for good reason. Community-based loyalty is one of the most promising and least understood levers available to brands right now. This chapter takes a close look at what consumers actually want from brand communities, what drives participation, and what gets in the way.
Community: The Emergent Loyalty Accelerator
Nearly one in three respondents (31%) said their chosen brand has an active community, and of those, nearly half (48%) participate in it. This engaged segment forms the foundation of our analysis, offering a cleareyed view of community perceptions, desired activities, authenticity expectations, and barriers to participation.
Values Alignment Drives Community Engagement
To understand what separates highly engaged community members from the rest, we applied the same values congruence methodology from earlier in our report
alongside a brand community engagement scale adapted from BJ Baldus et al. (2015). The scale measures 11 factors of community engagement, and scores were grouped into four segments: Very High, High, Moderate, and Low Engagement.
The pattern that emerged was clear. Nearly seven in ten consumers (69%) in the Very High Engagement segment also showed high values congruence with their chosen brand. Engagement didn’t happen by accident; it followed alignment. Among those with Very High Engagement scores, every single respondent (100%) said the appeal of a brand community is connecting with other customers who share similar interests and values. In the High Engagement segment, 97% said the same.
What This Means for Brands
What this means for brands is straightforward. Community strategies work best when they attract people who already feel a strong connection to what your brand stands for. Shared values are the foundation of participation, and participation is what deepens emotional loyalty over time. If you want to build a thriving community, start by being clear about your values and giving like-minded customers a reason to find each other.
Why Consumers Engage with Brand Communities
87% of consumers active in brand communities said it matters to them that loyalty programs offer a sense of community, and that they value features like forums, message boards, and panels. But what actually gets them to engage in the first place?
We asked both groups this question, just from different angles. Those already in a brand community reflected on their own experiences. Those who were not part of one told us what would motivate them to join hypothetically.
Of consumers active in brand communities said it matters to them that loyalty programs offer a sense of community.
For both groups, rewards came out on top, with an identical 65% selecting it as a motivating factor. That is where the common ground ends. Consumers already active in a brand community were significantly more motivated by nearly every other factor we measured, in some cases twice as likely to find them compelling.
What Both Existing Community Members and Non-Members Find Motivating To Join
Engaged in Brand Community Today Not Engaged in a Brand Community Today
When we applied community engagement scores to motivation data, the same pattern held. Rewards ranked as a top motivator across all engagement levels. But among consumers in the High and Very High Engagement segments, something notable happened. They were significantly more likely to find all of the other factors we asked about motivating as well, not just rewards. This has a direct implication for how you structure a community strategy.
What This Means for Brands
Members will show up for rewards, which is to be expected. The opportunity is in what happens next. Once consumers clear that initial threshold of participation, they tend to discover value that goes well beyond what they came for. That expanded sense of value is what builds emotional connection, and emotional connection is what drives long-term loyalty.
Think of rewards as the nudge that gets members over the first hurdle. Your job after that is to make sure there is enough on the other side to keep them engaged. The data suggests that for highly engaged community members, there already is.
Barriers to Joining Brand Communities
The most cited barrier to joining a brand community was simply not having enough time, mentioned by 32% of respondents overall. Privacy concerns came in close behind at 30%, followed by communities feeling too promotional and a lack of perceived value, each mentioned by 28% of respondents.
Community Barriers
Not having enough time.
Privacy concerns.
Feeling too promotional and a lack of perceived value.
authenticity as a barrier, something that barely registered among non-members.
This points to two distinct challenges for loyalty marketers.
When we looked at those already engaged in communities versus those who aren’t, some meaningful differences emerged. Among active community members, privacy was the top barrier, cited just over 30% of the time, followed by communities feeling too promotional at 29%. Active members were also notably more likely to flag a lack of
1. Friction: For consumers who have not yet joined a community, ease of participation matters enormously. If engaging requires too much time or effort, they will not bother. Loyalty practitioners should look for ways to weave community elements naturally into existing program touchpoints rather than treating community as a separate destination members have to seek out.
2. Trust: For members who are already engaged, the risk shifts. They are paying attention to whether the community feels genuine, and they will disengage if it starts to feel like a marketing channel. 62% of consumers said that being able to provide honest feedback, positive or negative, was key to perceiving a community as authentic. 59% wanted the ability to share experiences with other members, and 55% said they expected transparency from the brand about its products and services.
The brands that get community right will make it easy to join and worth staying in.
How Consumers Want to Engage
Among consumers already active in brand communities, early access was the most desired form of engagement, cited by 61% of respondents. Exclusive content came in second at 53%, and 47% said they want to be recognized for their participation.
Community Enagement
Early access was the most desired form of engagement. 61%
Exclusive content came in second. 53%
Said they want to be recognized for their participation. 47%
One finding worth noting cuts against a common assumption. While consumers want brand communities to feel authentic and not overly promotional, they do not want brands to disappear from the picture entirely. Only 25% wanted events without brand sponsorship, and only 30% wanted minimal brand involvement in community activities. Authenticity, it turns out, does not mean
absence. Members want the brand to be present, just not intrusive.
Community Appeal Crosses Borders
Perhaps the most striking finding in this section is how consistent these attitudes were across all six countries in the study. Every major trend held regardless of geography. Respondents in Spain skewed slightly higher on certain measures of community enthusiasm, but the differences were not significant enough to suggest a meaningfully different strategy is needed by market.
For global brands, this is an encouraging signal. A well-designed community strategy does not need to be rebuilt from scratch for each market. The motivations, barriers, and engagement preferences that shape community participation appear to be broadly human rather than culturally specific.
The Practitioner POV
70% of loyalty marketers surveyed said their brand has a community in place today. Of those, 43% described their community as quite active, while 27% acknowledged low activity rates. In terms of maturity, 55% described their community strategy as still in
Brands Stand With Community Initiatives
its early stages, while 40% considered theirs well developed.
When it comes to what these communities offer members, social media-based engagement was the most common format at 53%, followed by loyalty program member exclusive groups at 48% and in-person brand-sponsored events at 46%. Only 34% said they provide early access to products or services as part of their community offering. That last number represents a meaningful gap. Early access was the single most desired form of engagement among active community members on the consumer side, cited by 61%. Yet loyalty marketers are underdelivering the very thing their members want most.
On the broader question of value, marketers and consumers are largely aligned. 92% of
The Gap
Early access was the single most desired form of engagement among active community members on the consumer side, cited by 61%. Yet loyalty marketers are underdelivering the very thing their members want most.
loyalty practitioners agreed that communities can drive loyalty, retention, and customer lifetime value, with 50% of consumers confirming that being part of a brand community makes them more loyal.
83% of loyalty marketers agreed that authenticity is essential and that communities cannot feel overly promotional, a view that mirrors what consumers, particularly active community members, told us throughout this research.
Summary + Next Steps
Community is no longer a peripheral loyalty tactic. It’s becoming a core driver of emotional connection and long-term retention. The data from this year’s study makes a consistent case that when brand communities are built around genuine values alignment, they attract members who engage more deeply and connect with the brand in ways that go well beyond rewards. Consumers will show up for the incentives, but what keeps them engaged is a sense of shared identity, recognition, and belonging. At the same time, brands face real obstacles in getting this right. Time, privacy concerns, and a fear of feeling too promotional are keeping potential members on the sidelines, while inauthenticity risks pushing existing members out. Loyalty marketers largely understand the opportunity, but gaps remain between what brands are offering and what members actually want. The brands that close those gaps stand to build something even more durable than a points program.
Consider these takeaways as next steps in planning your community strategies:
1. Lead with values, not just rewards. Rewards attract members initially, but shared values are what drive deep engagement. Be explicit about what your brand stands for and build community experiences that reflect it consistently.
2. Make early access a cornerstone of your community offering. It was the number one thing community members said they want, yet only 34% of loyalty marketers
currently provide it. This is the most immediate gap to close.
3. Reduce friction at the point of entry. Time is the biggest barrier to joining. Community touchpoints should be embedded into existing program interactions rather than treated as a separate destination members have to seek out. Meet your members where they are (i.e. if they are most active on social media, that’s where your community should be).
4. Stay present but earn your place. Members do not want brands to disappear from their communities, but they will disengage if it feels promotional or scripted. Create structured opportunities for honest feedback, peer connection, and transparent brand communication to maintain authenticity.
5. Think globally from the start. Community motivations, barriers, and engagement preferences were remarkably consistent across all six countries in this study. A strong community strategy does not need to be rebuilt market by market, it needs to be designed with enough humanity at its core to travel.
While the Heart of Loyalty research was intentionally designed to surface global patterns in how consumers experience loyalty, data sharing, AI, recognition, advocacy, and community, the country level nuances reveal something equally important: consumer psychology is universal, but its expression is culturally conditioned. Across markets, the same underlying drivers of value, relevance, and trust earned through experience consistently influence loyalty behaviors. However, cultural norms around optimism, skepticism, risk, and social signaling shape how strongly consumers respond and how they use scales to express those attitudes. Understanding these
Geographic Nuances: How Culture Shapes Loyalty Perceptions
dynamics helps explain why some markets consistently over or under index, and why certain variables rise or fall in statistical significance by country.
Spain: Optimism, Expressiveness, and Early Adoption Energy
Spanish respondents consistently rated experiences, willingness, and motivations higher across a wide range of measuresfrom data sharing formats to advocacy behaviors to AI adoption. This pattern reflects a positivity bias, where consumers are more inclined to express agreement, openness, and enthusiasm on attitudinal scales.
From a behavioral perspective, this makes Spain appear “ahead” in several areas:
• Higher willingness to engage across data sharing formats
• Stronger advocacy and referral intent
• Greater familiarity with and openness toward AI driven experiences
• Slightly higher enthusiasm for community participation and recognition
The key insight for brands is not that Spanish consumers are categorically less discerning, but that they are more expressive and more comfortable signaling intent and openness. This expressiveness reflects how sentiment is communicated, not how rigorously choices are evaluated, and can be influenced by cultural norms that favor interpersonal warmth, social engagement, and optimism about new experiences. As a result, Spain often surfaces as an early indicator market, (useful for identifying potential upside), but brands should validate intent with behavior, especially when scaling insights globally.
Spain tends to reveal directional opportunity earlier than other markets, making it a useful bellwether for emerging loyalty trends, but not a one to one predictor of downstream adoption elsewhere.
Germany: Skepticism, Precision, and a Higher Bar for Endorsement
German respondents consistently rated items lower across scales and under indexed relative to the total population on measures such as advocacy behaviors, fairness perceptions, and willingness to engage. This is not a lack of loyalty interest: it’s a reflection of cultural rigor and evaluative restraint.
German consumers are:
• More cautious in how they express agreement
• Less likely to endorse behaviors without strong justification
• More sensitive to fairness, effort, and perceived imbalance
• More deliberate in signaling advocacy or enthusiasm
This dynamic also explains why some variables drop out of statistical significance within German only models. When consumers respond more conservatively and consistently cluster toward the lower end of scales, fewer factors differentiate meaningfully enough to emerge as drivers. This signals that German consumers tend to reserve strong agreement
for moments that meet a high internal threshold.
Loyalty is earned through consistency, fairness, and demonstrated competence - not emotional overtures or novelty. When German consumers signal intent, it is often more predictive of real behavior than higher scoring markets.
For global brands, Germany is a stress test market. Strategies that perform well here with clear value exchange, transparent AI use, fair recognition, low friction tend to travel well elsewhere once adapted for tone.
France: Rights Driven Trust and Structural Expectations
France surfaced as a distinct outlier in several models, most notably around data sharing. The ability to erase personal data emerged as a statistically significant trust driver in France - and nowhere else.
This reflects a rights oriented trust framework, shaped by strong regulatory norms, civic culture, and historical emphasis on individual agency within systems. French consumers are not inherently less willing to
share data or engage with loyalty programs, but they expect structural safeguards to be explicit and real.
This helps explain why:
• Data erasure stood out uniquely in France
• Social influence played a stronger role in AI adoption
• Recognition and program milestones felt more salient
In France, trust is less about reassurance and more about institutional proof. Brands must show they have embedded consumer rights into the system, not just promised good intentions. This reflects not skepticism toward brands, but an expectation that trusted systems should make consumer rights tangible and enforceable.
U.S., U.K., and Canada: Mature Loyalty, Value Calibration, and Pragmatism
Consumers in the U.S., U.K., and Canada largely mirrored the total population across most measures, reflecting mature loyalty ecosystems
where expectations are well formed and harder to exceed.
Notable patterns include:
• Lower expectation that recognition must always include rewards
• Lower memorability of program anniversaries
• More pragmatic views of AI and personalization benefits
These markets are less reactive to novelty and more focused on execution quality. Loyalty isn’t new; what matters is whether brands consistently deliver relevance, ease, and value without unnecessary friction. Consumers in these markets have lived through multiple waves of loyalty innovation, shaping more calibrated expectations.
In mature markets, loyalty innovation isn’t about doing more - it’s about doing better Small execution gaps matter more than bold experimentation.
What This Means Overall
Across countries, differences in magnitude should not be mistaken for differences in motivation. Spanish optimism and German restraint sit on top of the same psychological foundations. France’s emphasis on control and rights reflects context, not resistance. And mature markets reward precision over spectacle.
The Takeaway for Global Brands:
Build one loyalty framework rooted in human psychology, but calibrate how you ask, signal value, and prove trust by market. Global consistency earns efficiency; cultural fluency earns loyalty.
In Closing
This year’s Heart of Loyalty Research reveals a landscape undergoing rapid transformation, but one where human psychology (not technology) continues to define the rules of engagement. Across all six chapters, a clear, interconnected narrative emerges: consumers are willing to share, engage, advocate, and participate more deeply with the brands they trust, but only when the value is visible, the experience is intuitive, and the relationship feels genuinely reciprocal.
A special acknowledgment goes to the Kobie Research Center of Excellence, led by Dr. Jr. Slubowski, whose leadership expanded the research globally, and critically, brought practitioners into the study for the first time. By incorporating those on the front lines of loyalty strategy, alongside consumers across six international markets, the research delivers a far more dimensional, reality-based view of the loyalty landscape. The addition of practitioner insights exposes perception gaps, operational barriers, and strategic opportunities that would otherwise remain invisible. Every brand will see itself reflected in these findings; both in the opportunities unlocked and the gaps that still need bridging. The path forward isn’t one-size-fits-all, but the insights in this report offer a blueprint for where to look, what to prioritize, and how to build loyalty strategies that are future-ready, AI-enhanced, andpsychologically grounded.
To understand what these insights mean for your brand and how to operationalize the next steps, reach out to Kobie. Our team is here to help translate this research into actionable strategy, intelligent design, and measurable business outcomes.
