Singapore’s banking loyalty campaigns actually encourage disloyalty
by Chris Reed
It’s not uncommon for the average Singaporean to be carrying over 10 bank cards with them from 10 different banks. Why? Because every restaurant, hotel, spa and shop in Singapore has a deal with at least one bank/credit card. Singapore is offer city. When it comes to paying for a product or service and the cashier asks do you have either a Citibank or UOB or Standard Chartered or Amex or DBS or HSBC or OCBC or POSB or Visa or Mastercard card the Singaporean can say yes and redeem the offer! Clearly this produces zero loyalty and total promiscuity not seen since Henry VIII, except rather than cut up a card, like Henry beheaded his wives, and move on Singaporean’s keep all their cards! Can you imagine if Henry kept all 6 of his wives and lived with them all at the same time, that’s what Singaporean’s do with all their banking and credit cards. The cards offering hundreds of offer across the country gain more customers than anyone else but there will always be a certain store or favourite restaurant that can only be redeemed with another card to ensure that you have to cover all bases and have every card going in your purse or wallet. No one can stop the process now that it has snowballed too because the card that offers the least or heaven forbid no offers at all get’s carried less or not at all. It’s like a drug, they’re all hooked on generating offers for their customers and they can’t get enough of them. This is fantastic for the consumer but unnerving for the business as they have to offer more and more to compete. The banks say that these are loyalty offers when in reality they are sales promotional and tactical offers. These offers are desperately trying to get the card holder to use their card as opposed to their competitors. No brand has a killer offer and therefore all of the offers are competing on the same level. It’s loyalty for the next generation where there is no loyalty.
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