Restaurant Loyalty Programs Survey: Young Customers Most Likely to Sign Up

aytm logo icon
Posted Mar 22, 2017

Customer loyalty can be a major factor in the success of restaurants. And loyalty programs can make a big difference for those restaurants. According to an infographic from Toast, loyalty programs can encourage visitor frequency and the amount of money customers spend when they go to restaurants. So how many consumers have already signed up for restaurant loyalty programs? And how many are likely to do so in the future? We asked 1,000 respondents about their thoughts on customer loyalty in the restaurant industry.

rewards card

Restaurant Loyalty Programs

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest online survey, 39% of respondents said that they currently belong to many different loyalty programs. And 42% belong to at least one or two. More specifically, 31% of respondents said that they’ve signed up for many different restaurant loyalty programs. And 19% have signed up for at least one or two. The most popular restaurants that loyalty program consumers mentioned include Starbucks, Panera, Red Robin and Dunkin Donuts.

Future Consumers

Looking forward, 69% of respondents said that they are at least somewhat likely to sign up for a new loyalty program of some kind within the next year. And of those respondents, 78% said that they would be likely to sign up for restaurant loyalty programs, making it one of the most popular categories out there.

Customer Profile

According to Personality Radar, those who take part in restaurant loyalty programs tend to be young, trendy consumers who are interested both in great deals and features of convenience. They also tend to be fairly tech savvy, so targeting them online and on mobile devices could potentially be a beneficial strategy for restaurants.

Key Takeaways

To attract the young, trendy consumers who tend to sign up for restaurant loyalty programs, businesses could potentially utilize tactics like online or mobile ads. And they could also promote their loyalty programs on social media and even offer the loyalty features right on social media or a mobile app to make use more convenient for those consumers. However, they are also fairly concerned with price and value. So it’s important that restaurants call attention to the cost benefits of their loyalty programs in their marketing materials. Overall though, it seems that restaurant loyalty programs are poised for fairly significant growth within the pretty near future.You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: Starbucks Card by Josh Hallett under CC BY 2.0What do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on March 13 via AYTM’s online survey panel.