The Loyalty NewswireApril 28, 2025

Global News Roundup from The Wise Marketer

From the Editor

With a Canadian election happening today, the impact of US Tariff Policy is top of mind, given that it is a key election issue for Canadian voters. Survey results from NeilsenIQ show that 87% of Canadians and 50% of Americans oppose tariffs.

This dovetails with an article in the Wall Street Journal last week indicating the CEOs of American Airlines, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and many other major U.S. companies warn that shape-shifting tariff threats make it virtually impossible to plan and are spooking consumers.

American, Southwest Airlines and Alaska Air Group told investors and analysts that leisure travel had already softened and pulled their full-year outlooks because the economic climate makes it too tough to forecast. Like it or not, humans crave certainty and when CEO’s can’t articulate a forward-looking message with confidence and financial planners can’t plan without create a plethora of scenarios, confidence shrinks.

What’s the connection point for loyalty marketers? Well, Richard Schenker predicted some of this in his prescient article published in Wise Marketer during January 2025 about the impact of Tariffs on Customer Loyalty. It’s worth a read.

Stay. Loyal. Always.

Chief Marketing Officer, Wise Marketer Group

Global News Roundup

Chipotle Reaps Earnings from Loyalty Program Due to Higher Customer Engagement

Chipotle Mexican Grill got off to a slow start in 2025 with sales that missed estimates and its first same-store sales decline since 2020.

However, the Q4 2024 Earnings call in February had some news not often published by brands related to the performance of their customer loyalty programs. Adam Rymer, Chipotle Chief Financial Officer, stated, “Sales in the fourth quarter grew over 13% year-over-year to reach $2.8 billion, as comp sales grew 5.4%, driven by 4% transaction growth. Our comp included a negative 20 basis point true-up related to our loyalty program. As a reminder, in Q4 of each year, we reevaluate the estimated breakage for loyalty points that will expire, and this year we decreased our estimate due to higher member engagement.”

Seems the calculations around activity levels, engagement, and breakage that we cover in our Loyalty Academy™ workshops are not just an academic exercise. Chipotle enjoyed a tangible addition to its income due to the review and adjustment of its loyalty program liability.

[REMINDER] Ebbo and Wise Marketer Release Latest in Strategy Brief Series: The New Loyalty Playbook

The latest Wise Marketer Strategy Brief (WMSB) is released in cooperation with ebbo and is titled “The New Loyalty Playbook.” This first eBook chapter of three examines a concept that is core to the future of loyalty strategy development – how brands can leverage new loyalty fundamentals to foster meaningful customer relationships that stand the test of time.

The road to customer loyalty is fraught with expectations that continue to evolve as audiences grow more diverse. The challenge for brands lies in creating loyalty initiatives that provide real relevance and resonance across every brand touchpoint. This eBook reveals how brands can master today’s loyalty fundamentals: bridging emotional loyalty, value-based offerings, enhanced realities, and the all-important choice factor.

If your ultimate goal is to embed customer engagement within a habit loop that repeatedly delivers satisfaction, download “The New Loyalty Playbook” to build a robust framework for lasting growth and impactful results.

Texas-based Convenience Retailer TXB Announces Refreshed Loyalty Program

TXB, a Texas based convenience and fuel retailer is revamping its loyalty program. The new program will feature stackable fuel discounts and fewer points needed for discounted purchases, free digital coupons and bonus offers. The convenience chain stated its goal is to make it easier for customers to earn more points per dollar on both inside store and TXB app purchases.

Loyalty customers will also have access to TXB’s Chug Club drink subscription. This subscription will now give customers two coffee, fountain, tea, and frozen dispensed drinks of any size per day. TXB is No. 136 on CSP’s 2024 Top 202 ranking of convenience-store chains by store count.

Radial Survey: 72% of Consumers Prioritize Speed and Reliability in Deciding Where to Buy

Radial, Inc., a bpostgroup company, announced the results of a new survey of 1,000 consumers that reveals a shift in how shoppers evaluate and remain loyal to direct-to-consumer (DTC) and modern brands.

The findings show that operational performance—particularly delivery speed, availability, and ease of returns—is the leading factor driving repeat purchases and consumer trust for modern brands. The survey goes on to say that as online competition intensifies and consumer expectations soar, the next phase of success hinges on operational execution. Read The Tale of 3 Fuel Retailers for Editor’s experience with operational excellence and customer loyalty.

Highlights and Metrics from Alphabet’s Q1 2025 Earnings Call

In this most recent earnings call, Google execs highlighted the changing nature of search, saying “we see it growing the number and types of questions we can answer. We are already seeing this with AI Overviews, which now has more than 1.5 billion users every month. Nearly a year after we launched AI Overviews in the US, we continue to see that usage growth is increasing as people learn that Search is more useful for more of their queries.”

Searching the call, we found over 150 references to AI. Here are a few highlights:

Surpassed 270 million paid subscriptions with YouTube and Google One as key drivers
Introduced Gemini 2.5, “our most intelligent AI model, which is achieving breakthroughs in performance, and it’s widely recognized as the best model in the industry”
Google Agent Space allows employees to find and synthesize information from within their organization, converse with AI agents and take action with their enterprise applications. It combines Enterprise Search, Conversational AI or Chat and access to Gemini and third-party Agents.
Google’s network is robust and resilient supported by over 2 million miles of fiber and 33 subsea cables

Chestnut Market Rolls Out Mashgin AI-Powered Self-Checkout

Convenience-store retailer Chestnut Market has deployed Mashgin’s AI-powered checkout system at its Bethel, Connecticut, location and plans to deploy the checkout system into additional stores this year. This marks the first Shell-branded store to roll out Mashgin’s technology, which integrates with Shell’s payment network through the Invenco EDGEPro device.

CPD Energy, owner of Chestnut Market, is No. 93 on CSP’s 2024 Top 202 ranking of convenience-store chains by total number of company-operated locations. Mashgin uses computer vision to make checkout simple and fast. Customers need only to place items on a viewing surface and everything rings up automatically in what Mashgin terms “The World’s Fastest AI-Powered Checkout.”

National Retail Federation Announces Top 50 Global Retailers 2025

The NRF released its Top 50 Global Retailers list, a comprehensive view of the 50 most impactful international retailers based on their operations at the start of 2024. Kantar partnered with NRF to produce this ranking that seeks to maximize discussion, debate, education, and exploration opportunities.

Kantar’s ranking methodology uses a system in which points are given to retailers based on their domestic and international retail revenues. To qualify for the rankings, retailers need to have a direct investment in at least three countries.

It’s interesting to note that three Convenience and Fuel Retailers made the list this year, including: Seven & i, Couche-Tard, and OXXO.

Netflix Reports High Market Penetration and Strong Retention, but Shelves Two Key Metrics

In its Q1 2025 Earnings Call, Netflix spoke with great confidence about its operating results. C-CEO Greg Peters stated, “We think we got a pretty good business today, over $40 billion in revenue. We’ve got over 300 million paid households. Those represent an audience of over 700 million individuals. We’re leading in streaming view share.”

Peters also mentioned that Netflix is experiencing “strong, stable acquisition and retention trends” in the business and that there were “no meaningful changes to our retention story.” A significant matter of note for loyalty marketers is that Q1 2025 was “the first quarter in which the streaming giant didn’t disclose quarterly subscriber numbers and average revenue per member, a change the company has said focuses Wall Street more on revenue and profits.” It’s odd that these two metrics would be eliminated from reporting in the future. Lack of transparency in some membership reporting has been debated by followers of Qantas FFP as you can read here.

Walgreens, Opioid Settlement, and Customer Loyalty

Walgreens agreed this week to pay up to $350 million in a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, which said that it illegally filled millions of prescriptions in the last decade for opioids and other controlled substances.

The government’s complaint, filed in January in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleges that Walgreens knowingly filled millions of illegal prescriptions for controlled substances between August 2012 and March 2023. These include prescriptions for excessive opioids and prescriptions filled significantly early.

When brands issue unfortunate news, what impact is there on brand loyalty at the macro level? It has been said that consumer have short memories. You can read more about memory and brand recall here.

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