An Integrated Thesis Examining the Influence of Casino Loyalty Program Membership on Gamblers’ Attitudinal and Behavioural Loyalty

Every major casino corporation offers their customers the opportunity to enroll in a brand-affiliated loyalty program. These programs serve as marketing strategies designed to foster attitudinal (i.e., trust and satisfaction with the brand) and behavioural (i.e., purchase intentions and actions) loyalty among customers by way of granting members rewards in exchange for making purchases. It is the hope that through granting members rewards, gambling expenditure will be increased, thus generating profits for the casino. However, unlike loyalty programs in other industries, casino loyalty programs reward members for engaging in gambling—an inherently addictive activity. Despite this, there is a paucity of research that has applied knowledge from the field of responsible gambling studies to help us understand how loyalty program membership influences the attitudinal and behavioural loyalty of members. In the current work, I present an integrated thesis that includes three manuscripts (six studies in total) that sought to expand the knowledge base on the aforementioned issue. In the first manuscript, I used two studies to test the hypothesis that loyalty program tier status and disordered gambling symptomatology would have an interactive effect on the attitudinal and behavioural loyalty of members, such that the highest level of loyalty would be observed among high tier status, high risk gamblers. In the second manuscript, I investigated whether positive play (i.e., responsible gambling beliefs and behaviours) is predictive of attitudinal (Study 1) and behavioural loyalty (Study 2), and whether this predictive utility would be maintained after accounting for disordered gambling symptomatology. In the final manuscript, I examined the potential benefits of belonging to a casino loyalty program for both players and industry. In two studies, I tested whether incentivizing responsible gambling tool use increases both willingness to use responsible gambling tools and attitudinal loyalty. Results from the current work will help responsible gambling researchers, policy makers and industry have a better understanding of how players may be affected by casino loyalty program membership.