Reciprocity and Customer Loyalty

Peter Bregman writes in his blogpost, "The real Secret of Thoroughly Excellent Companies" on his experiences with two different hotel franchises, and how while one lost him as a customer for ever, the other one made a customer for life. 

Link to the article: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bregman/2009/03/the-real-secret-of-thoroughly.html

Sadly for the first company, the staff were either not trained to leverage this well known psychological  principle to their advantage, or the particular employee did not do the homework and made a costly mistake of losing a customer for life.

The real secret here..(not so much of a secret anymore to the cognitive psychology and marketing prractitioners)  is a well known psychological principle called Reciprocity which has been tested and proven decades ago. If you've ever wondered why companies give away freebies at conferences and tradeshows, they are trying to leverage the principle of reciprocity. An act of giving without expectation puts a strong psychological pressure on the recipients, and makes them obligated to return the favor, in this case won the customer loyalty.

How can you make sure this strategy would work? There are two things which are particulalry important

1. Value of the gift (not the dollar value) - the gift should be of some importance to the recipient in the context (something as trivial as an automatic extended checkout for a guest who overslept)
2. Intent - The act should look genuine, and not opportunistic... if the recipient feels that the act isn't genuine, you might still get back something, but it will not get you a customer for life.