Company Name: Olympic Car Rental Co.
Characters: Laura Walkins(VP-Marketing) , Andy Kim(Manager CRP),Seth Bergman(Senior Financial Analyst),Eva Chan(Southwest regional Manager Sales), Marvin Fleming(OM), Sriny Vajarain,Jorge Martinez & Amy Mckeever( Franichisee operators).
Theme of Case: One of the competitor company named “Enterpise Car Rental Co.”-the biggest player in the market has announced an attractive custom loyalty program. This is considered to be a paradigm shift from the traditional rewarding pattern in Car Rental market. Enterprise Car Rental Co. is already reaping the benefits from the program.
Olympic Car Rental Company’s top management wants to discuss about this innovative customer loyalty program(CLP). They being a low price offering co., should they make changes to its existing customer loyalty program, as some of them believe that their CLP is not working effectively or whether they should work on lowering price of their rental cars along with aggressive advertisement & promotional activities?
Car-Rental Market & Customer Loyalty Program:
Loyalty Programs provides considerable information about the customers that enables companies to maintain more knowledge & personal relationship even in long run. The history of Loyalty programs can be traced back to 1900s where S&H Green Stamp Company came out with coupons & trading stamps. A major marketing loyalty program in 1981 undertaken by American Airlines named AA Advantage frequent flyer, in which heaviest travelers usually paid most for their tickets-meaning that American Airlines received highest revenue for rewarded miles.
The U.S. Car rental industry was born in 1916 by Josiah Saunders, who had one Model T ford that he rented for ten cents a mile, classifying with ad “Automobile for Hire.” Car Rental business unlike airlines industry highly depends on the overall economic condition. Car rental fleets can be increased or decreased in