Apr 26, 2021
The North Face, online retailer Kogan and meal kit provider Marley Spoon are among the many brands that recently began rewarding customers for their purchases with fractional shares of their stock.
The stock rewards program is made possible through a partnership with fintech start-up Upstreet.
Consumers sign up to the Upstreet app, link their bank account and start shopping for their favorite brands. Upstreet tracks and rewards purchases with fractions of shares in those companies. The payouts typically range from 0.75 percent to three percent of their order’s value in fractional shares, depending on whether they are new or existing customers.
For non-publicly listed companies, members earn shares in an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), which is a basket of stocks exposed to a specific theme.
One goal of the Upstreet plan is to get people more comfortable with investing in equity markets. Founder and CEO Chris Eckelmann also believes stock ownership drives loyalty better than typical cash back programs.
He told BrewNews the idea came to him after seeing diminishing returns on frequent flyer miles. “Cash back doesn’t really drive loyalty we believe — you might go there because you get cash back, but you will go to a competitor if they offer more,” Mr. Eckelmann said.
Upstreet’s traction was helped by the success in the U.S. of Bumped, a stock rewards app that raised $10.4 million in a funding round last November.
An independent study from The Columbia School of Business, published in February, looked at Bumped’s two-year pilot with a number of retailers and restaurants, including Target, McDonald’s, Kroger, Lowe’s and Costco. The study found weekly spending at the selected brands jumped 40 percent once customers were rewarded in fractional shares of stock as part of a stock rewards program. Such schemes were also found to increase visits at those brands and decrease visits at competitors.
Michaela Pagel, a Columbia professor, said in a statement, “People buy brands they care about and we find that there’s a direct link between spending and stock holdings.”
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: What do you see as the benefits and challenges of loyalty programs that link purchases to fractional stock ownership? Do you see this type of loyalty program offering taking off in the U.S.?
"I don’t think this type of loyalty program would be as popular as cash-back rewards, but for the right retailer it could help create a small group of brand loyalists."
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April 26, 2021 at 10:33PM
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