The Advantages of Loyalty Programms for Customers. A Case Study of the Lufthansa Miles & More Programm

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 2,2, University of Applied Sciences Essen (FOM Hannover), language: English, abstract: This thesis firstly covers definitions of customer loyalty, loyalty cards and the different types of loyalty programs. Section two deals with some important details of Lufthansäs Miles & More program, such as the background of Miles & More, important facts about Star Alliance, the possibilities that Lufthansa offers its frequent flyers to earn and spend reward miles, information about the different status levels of Miles & More, and basic knowledge about data protection with Miles & More. In addition to the established research, an empirical study in the form of a 15-question survey was performed on several platforms to which frequent flyers have access. This survey is discussed in the third section of this thesis. To obtain information about how frequent flyers value the Miles & More program, this first-hand information was required and used to evaluate the Miles & More program. The performed survey can be found in Appendix 1, page 51 ff., and the results of the survey can be found in Appendix 2, page 58 ff. The survey consisted of four parts: the first part contained information about the topic itself and data protection. The second part compromised four questions about the flying pattern of each participant, and the frequent flyer status that each participant had with Miles & More. The third and most extensive part of the survey dealt with the number of miles that each participant owned, the benefits for frequent flyers with Miles & More, and the satisfaction of the participants with the program. The last part contained questions for statistical reasons, such as the gender and age of the participants. The fourth section of this thesis further addresses the results of the survey and provides explanations for why the most important benefit of Lufthansäs Miles & More program is so significant for customers. The fifth section deals with improvements to make the Miles & More program much more appealing to customers, regarding frequent flyer satisfaction, the earning and spending of frequent flyer miles, and the addition to the program of new benefits for frequent flyers. This thesis concludes the topic in the sixth section.