THE CONDITIONS OF USING OF LOYALTY PROGRAMS ON THE POLISH MARKET

Brand loyalty is a strategic asset of the company. Having loyal or faithful customers, in the era of competition, provides to business of essential benefits. Shaping of customer loyalty is not so easy. Companies, among others, by developing such elements as customer service quality and marketing communication quality, try to influence on customers' market behavior. One of the tools of influence on customers' behavior is loyalty programs. Thanks to these, brand owners try to attract and retain customers by planning the reward system and trying to reward the most loyal customers by – on the one hand – providing them an additional value, and on the other hand – turning them into brand advocates, the most valuable customer group. Popularity of loyalty programs in Poland is not very high. It is estimated that 25-40% of customers use loyalty programs. It is less than, for example, in the US or Canada. The benefits offered by most loyalty programs in Poland, however, are not high, and consumers think that the rewards they can get are very expensive and overpriced. Such a low assessment of the benefits of loyalty programs among customers negatively impact on their social acceptance. The change of business activities can change attitudes among Polish society. A positive example is the «My Ladybird» (in original «Moja Biedronka»), it is program introduced by the Biedronka discount chain, where both are the proposed bonuses and additional promotional campaigns, which were essentially targeted at children, proved to be a great success and have allowed them to outperform competitors with a recognized position in this area in just half a year. The attractiveness of the program has led to the active use it by 5 million households, which constitutes about 40 % of all households in Poland. The aim of the research is to present the concept of loyalty and the role of loyalty programs in shaping it. The author focused mainly on the conditions of today's popularity (or lack of it) available loyalty programs in Poland. Because of the availability of numerous studies of loyalty programs in Poland, secondary data was used in the study.