A Systematic Review of Blockchain-based Loyalty Programs

Abstract

Customer loyalty programs, the incentive structures designed to reward and retain customers for purchases and other activities, have struggled to maximize their intended goals. Academics and industry practitioners have advocated for the use of blockchain technology as a vehicle to revolutionize loyalty programs. Despite this hype, we have yet to see an examination of existing blockchain-based loyalty solutions. This paper identifies, reviews, and classifies tokenized loyalty solutions. Using a web-scraping method, we systematically retrieved 9,642 tokens listed on the coinmarketcap.com website. Multiple applications of inclusion/exclusion criteria resulted in 21 active loyalty programs based on blockchain, which we evaluated in depth. Our findings confirm that the domain is nascent yet more actualized than previous research has suggested. This analysis fills a much-needed role in the blockchain-loyalty literature by providing an industry lens into the realities of blockchain as a loyalty solution.