nytimes.com -

Nearly as long as there have been coffee shops and carwashes, all manner of businesses have handed out buy-10-get-one-free punch cards and hoped to reap the rewards of this simplest of loyalty marketing campaigns. But a new day is dawning.

Smartphones and loyalty apps have begun offering small businesses enhanced program features and automated administration capabilities once affordable only to large companies like airlines and hotel chains. These capabilities also offer the equivalent of a real-world psychology lab for easily evaluating the effects of offerings and incentives on customer loyalty.

“All organisms, in different ways, are drawn to goals,” said Oleg Urminsky, who teaches marketing research at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “The closer we are to achieving our goals, the more motivated we are to keep doing something. As mice on a runway get closer to a food pellet, they run faster.” Similarly, he said, “as people get closer to having a completed card, the time between visits gets smaller.”

photo CC by Alan Cleaver