As companies increasingly turn to emotion-based marketing to help retain their customers, they frequently employ the element of surprise — such as offering unanticipated awards to members of loyalty programs. But according to a June 2002 working paper, such tactics often don't work as intended. The paper is by Adam Lindgreen, an assistant professor of marketing at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, and Joëlle Vanhamme, an assistant professor of consumer behavior and marketing communication at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.“To Surprise or Not To Surprise Your Customers: The Use of Surprise as a Marketing Tool” conducts a thorough review of the literature on the use of retention-based marketing in different business sectors. It shows that frequent-user programs and loyalty schemes set up by credit card companies, bookstores, auto manufacturers and supermarkets all have a major flaw: They fail to provide long-term strategic advantage because rivals can easily copy them. The literature also suggests, however, that emotion-based marketing offers a competitive advantage because it is almost impossible to copy.A
