Drivers of Customers’ Adoption and Adoption Timing of a New Loyalty Card in the Grocery Retail Market

The authors study consumers’ process of adoption of a new loyalty card in a grocery retail context. More specifically, the authors simultaneously investigate the impact of attitudinal, behavioral, and socio-demographic variables on the likelihood of adoption and the time to adoption. They show that these variables differently affect the adoption likelihood and timing and demonstrate the importance of attitudinal measures of customer loyalty such as commitment to the store. This research confirms the so-called self-selection bias and extends it to the attitudinal dimension of loyalty. Some guidelines are proposed to increase the effectiveness of loyalty card program launches.