Reward me or charity: The impact of mobile e-commerce platforms' loyalty programme reward types on participation intention

PurposeWith the development of e-commerce, loyalty programmes (LPs) are gradually being adopted in the online retailing environment to improve consumer loyalty. This article determines the factors that affect consumers' LP participation intention on mobile e-commerce platforms to help these platforms improve their performance.Design/methodology/approachThis article focusses on LP reward types and divides them into self-oriented rewards or altruistic rewards. Two experiments are conducted to test the proposed hypotheses. After online data collection, data analysis is performed.FindingsLP participation intention with altruistic rewards is significantly stronger than that with self-oriented rewards. Perceived value plays a complete mediating role in the impact of reward type on participation intention, while a point leaderboard plays a positive moderating role in the impact of reward type on perceived value.Practical implicationsThis study’s findings can improve the design of LPs by mobile e-commerce platforms.Originality/valueThis article focusses on LPs in the online environment, a stream of research that is limited. The results also have implications for prosocial relationship marketing programmes.

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