Even a simple loyalty program can woo customers into visiting more or prevent them from straying. Photo via Getty Images

Almost everyone who has shopped at a supermarket or hopped on a plane has been invited to join a customer loyalty club. But even the businesses that offer these programs are sometimes unsure of who uses and benefits from them most.

Rice Business Professor Arun Gopalakrishnan joined Zhenling Jiang from the University of Pennsylvania and Yulia Nevskaya and Raphael Thomadsen from Washington University in St. Louis to study non-tiered loyalty programs (these differ from tiered loyalty programs, which offer more benefits and exclusivity to customers who spend more).

These simpler programs, the researchers found, can have a striking value: the program they studied increased customer value by almost 30 percent during a five-year time frame, they found. That's considerably higher than previously found in this type of loyalty program. Almost as surprisingly, the program's effect on moderately loyal customers – seemingly among the likely beneficiaries – was minimal. Instead, it had the most dramatic impact on customers who had previously showed either great engagement with the firm or almost no engagement at all.

"The main upside of the program was that it got people to stick around with the firm, preventing defection," Gopalakrishnan said on the podcast INFORMS. At the company he studied, more than 80 percent of the total lift came simply from keeping customers in the fold.

Typically, he added, loyalty programs are assumed to be most worthwhile to frequent or high-spending customers. But the researchers found that very low-frequency customers who joined the program were also more likely to stick around, even though it didn't make much economic difference for them. "There may be some psychological benefit, just from being part of the program, that helps keeps these less frequent customers from walking away," Gopalakrishnan suggested.

Researchers have found it fairly easy to study tiered loyalty programs. But the exact value of the simpler, non-tiered programs is more obscure. That's because the previous studies typically included customers who had self-selected by joining a loyalty program.

Gopalakrishnan's research took a different approach. To address the imprecisions of past research, he and his team built a data collection model that let them examine consumer behavior both before and after customers joined a loyalty program. Importantly, the model also distinguished between program members (some of whom had been automatically signed up for the program) and nonmembers.

Using this more detailed model, the research team studied the behavior of more than 5,500 men's hair salon clients over 30 months. The research was possible because the team had already been following these clients to track how much money they spent during each visit, their frequency of visits, the types of services and products they used and if they used any type of discounts.

Then, ten months into the study, the hair salon chain created a non-tiered loyalty program. Customers who joined received a coupon via email for $5 off for every $100 they spent. Other customers chose not to join. That allowed researchers to compare the behavior in the two groups, with non-members as the control group.

The loyalty program had no impact on the amount of money clients spent during each visit, researchers found. Gopalakrishnan's team speculated that this might be because industries like hair salons have only a limited ability to increase sales of goods and services. Hair, after all, only grows so fast. On the other hand, the loyalty program did appear to influence how often customers visited.

Rather than increasing the frequency of visits for moderate clients, however, non-tiered loyalty programs changed the behavior of customers who were at the two poles of engagement: those who rarely showed up and those who visited so often they were practically on a first-name basis with their stylist.

At a time when consumers are overwhelmed with marketing ploys to lure their time and dollars, a thoughtful loyalty program can indeed be a good business investment, Gopalakrishnan's team concluded. However, managers should bear in mind that the benefit may not be exactly what they expect. Instead of giving a gentle nudge to turn steady customers into bigger spenders, good loyalty programs seem best at corralling outliers into the herd.

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This article originally ran on Rice Business Wisdom and is based on research from Arun Gopalakrishnan, assistant professor of marketing at Rice Business; Zhenling Jiang, assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; and Raphael Thomadsen and Yulia Nevskaya, professor of marketing and an assistant professor of marketing, respectively, at the Olin Business School of Washington University in St. Louis.

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Houston hospital performs first fully robotic heart transplant in the U.S.

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A team at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, led by Dr. Kenneth Liao, successfully performed the first fully robotic heart transplant in the United States earlier this year, the Houston hospital recently shared.

Liao, a professor and chief of cardiothoracic transplantation and circulatory support at Baylor College of Medicine and chief of cardiothoracic transplantation and mechanical circulatory support at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, used a surgical robot to implant a new heart in a 45-year-old male patient through preperitoneal space in the abdomen by making small incisions.

The robotic technology allowed the medical team to avoid opening the chest and breaking the breast bone, which reduces the risk of infection, blood transfusions and excessive bleeding. It also leads to an easier recovery, according to Liao.

"Opening the chest and spreading the breastbone can affect wound healing and delay rehabilitation and prolong the patient's recovery, especially in heart transplant patients who take immunosuppressants," Liao said in a news release. "With the robotic approach, we preserve the integrity of the chest wall, which reduces the risk of infection and helps with early mobility, respiratory function and overall recovery."

The patient received the heart transplant in March, after spending about four months in the hospital due to advanced heart failure. According to Baylor, he was discharged home after recovering from the surgery in the hospital for a month without complications.

"This transplant shows what is possible when innovation and surgical experience come together to improve patient care," Liao added in the release. "Our goal is to offer patients the safest, most effective and least invasive procedures, and robotic technology allows us to do that in extraordinary ways."

7 can't miss Houston business and innovation events for July

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Editor's note: While many Houstonians are flocking to vacation destinations, there are still plenty of opportunities to network and learn at tech and business events for those sticking close to home this month. From an inaugural biotech summit to the 12th edition of a local pitch showcase, here are the Houston business and innovation events you can't miss in July and how to register. Please note: this article might be updated to add more events.

July 10 - Out in Tech Mixer 

Out in Tech Houston provides an inclusive networking space for LGBTQ+ people and allies working in tech. Check out this relaxed, social-mixer event, hosted on the second Thursday of every month.

This event is Thursday, July 10, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Second Draught. Register here.

July 14 – Latinas in Tech Coworking Day 

Connect with fellow Latinas in the industry at Sesh Coworking. Network or work alongside peers, board members and community leaders in a shared office environment.

This event is Monday, July 14, from 9-11:30 a.m. at Sesh Coworking. Find more information here.

July 17 – UTMB Innovation VentureX Summit

Attend the inaugural UTMB Innovation VentureX Summit, where innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers and investors will dive into the future of biotech. Expect panel discussions, fireside chats, a technology showcase and networking opportunities.

This event is Thursday, July 17, from 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m. at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Find more information here.

July 17 – Open Project Night 

Collaborate on solutions for some of Houston’s most pressing issues at this month’s Open Project Night at Impact Hub Houston. Hear from guest speakers and listen to open mic pitches. July’s theme is Decent Work & Economic Growth.

This event is Thursday, July 17, from 5:30-7:30 p.m at Impact Hub Houston. Register here.

July 24 – NASA Tech Talks

Every fourth Thursday of the month, NASA experts, including longtime engineer Montgomery Goforth, present on technology development challenges NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the larger aerospace community are facing and how they can be leveraged by Houston’s innovation community. Stick around after for drinks and networking at Second Draught.

This event is Thursday, July 24, from 6-7 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

July 30 – Ion Bike Club

Join Bike Houston at the Ion for a 45-minute guided cruise through the Ion District and Midtown. Afterward, enjoy a complimentary beer and network with like-minded riders at Second Draught.

This event is Wednesday, July 30, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

July 31 – Bayou Startup Showcase

Hear pitches from startups and small businesses from Rice University’s OwlSpark and the University of Houston’s RED Labs accelerators at the 12th annual Bayou Startup Showcase. Read more about this year’s teams here.

This event is Thursday, July 31, from 3:30-7 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

Houston researchers: Here's what it takes to spot a great new idea

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Having a “promotion focus” really does create a mental lens through which new ideas are more visible.

Key findings:

  • New ideas can be crucially important to businesses, driving innovation and preventing stagnation.
  • Recognizing those ideas, though, isn’t always easy.
  • Nurturing what is known as “promotion focus” can help managers spot fresh ideas.

Whenever the late surgeon Michael DeBakey opened a human chest, he drew on a lifetime of resources: the conviction that heart surgery could and should be vastly improved, the skill to venture beyond medicine’s known horizons and the vision to recognize new ideas in everyone around him, no matter how little formal training they had.

Appreciating new ideas is the heartbeat of business as well as medicine. But innovation is surprisingly hard to recognize. In a pioneering 2017 article, Rice Business Professor Jing Zhou and her colleagues published their findings on the first-ever study of the traits and environments that allow leaders to recognize new ideas.

Recent decades have produced a surge of research looking at how and when employees generate fresh ideas. But almost nothing has been written on another crucial part of workplace creativity: a leader’s ability to appreciate new thinking when she sees it.

Novelty, after all, is what drives company differentiation and competitiveness. Work that springs from new concepts sparks more investigation than work based on worn, already established thought. Companies invest millions to recruit and pay star creatives.

Yet not every leader can spot a fresh idea, and not every workplace brings out that kind of discernment. In four separate studies, Zhou and her coauthors examined exactly what it takes to see a glittering new idea wherever it appears. Their work sets the stage for an entirely new field of future research.

First, though, the team had to define their key terms. “Novelty recognition” is the ability to spot a new idea when someone else presents it. “Promotion focus,” previous research has shown, is a comfort level with new experiences that evokes feelings of adventure and excitement. “Prevention focus” is the opposite trait: the tendency to associate new ideas with danger, and respond to them with caution.

But does having “promotion focus” as opposed to “prevention focus” color the ability to see novelty? To find out, Zhou’s team came up with an ingenious test, artificially inducing these two perspectives through a series of exercises. First, they told 92 undergraduate participants that they would be asked to perform a set of unrelated tasks. Then the subjects guided a fictional mouse through two pencil and paper maze exercises.

While one exercise showed a piece of cheese awaiting the mouse at the end of the maze (the promise of a reward), the other maze depicted a menacing owl nearby (motivation to flee).

Once the participants had traced their way through the mazes with pencils, they were asked to rate the novelty of 33 pictures — nine drawings of space aliens and 24 unrelated images. The students who were prepped to feel an adventurous promotion focus by seeking a reward were much better at spotting the new or different details among these images than the students who’d been cued to have a prevention focus by fleeing a threat.

The conclusion: a promotion focus really does create a mental lens through which new ideas are more visible.

Zhou’s team followed this study with three additional studies, including one that surveyed 44 human resource managers from a variety of companies. For this study, independent coders rated the mission statements of each firm, assessing their cultures as “innovative” or “not innovative.” The HR managers then evaluated a set of written practices — three that had been in use for years, and three new ones that relied on recent technology. The managers from the innovative companies were much better at rating the new HR practices for novelty and creativity. To recognize novelty, in other words, both interior and external environments make a difference.

The implications of the research are groundbreaking. The first ever done on this subject, it opens up a completely new research field with profound questions. Can promotion focus be created? How much of this trait is genetic, and how much based on natural temperament, culture, environment and life experience? Should promotion focus be cultivated in education? If so, what would be the impact? After all, there are important uses for prevention focus, such as corporate security and compliance. Meanwhile, how can workplaces be organized to bring out the best in both kinds of focus?

Leaders eager to put Zhou’s findings to use right away, meanwhile, might look to the real-world model of Michael DeBakey. Practice viewing new ideas as adventures, seek workplaces that actively push innovation and, above all, cultivate the view that every coworker, high or low, is a potential source of glittering new ideas.

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This article originally appeared on Rice Business Wisdom.

Jing Zhou is the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Management and Psychology in Organizational Behavior at the Jones Graduate School of Business of Rice University. Zhou, J., Wang, X., Song, J., & Wu, J. (2017). "Is it new? Personal and contextual influences on perceptions of novelty and creativity." Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(2): 180-202.