Starbucks yesterday announced a new version of its iOS app, featuring an overhauled design that aims to offer a more personalized experience for its customers and highlight the benefits of its loyalty program.
A new homepage for the app puts the company's Stars rewards front and center, enabling users to keep track of how many stars they've accrued and redeem them more easily.
Collected stars are displayed via an interactive Stars screen that shows customers how close they are to their next reward and allows them to use their finger as a "magnet" to create their own constellations.
The new homepage also keeps users regularly updated with personalized offers and displays live music track information highlighting what's "Now Playing" in Starbucks stores.
The update introduces the option for members to redeem rewards and offers through its Mobile Order & Pay platform, which was introduced in the United States in September 2015. Members were unable to redeem rewards through the app until now.
However, stars are now earned by how much customers spend in stores, rather than how often they make purchases. The change translates to two stars for every dollar spent, instead of one star per visit, which means customers will have to spend $63 more to qualify for a free reward.
Reward program tiers have also been reduced from three to two in the new scheme, meaning customers must earn more stars than previously in order to go up a tier.
Starbucks says its app is used by 17 million people and Rewards members can expect more features soon, including the ability to earn Stars outside of Starbucks.
Starbucks is a free download from the App Store for iPhone and iPad. [Direct Link]
Top Rated Comments
The new program is a serious downgrade from the previous one, esp. for "only" coffee drinkers like me. If SB wanted to reward customers based on the total bill, not single transaction it could have kept the old program and awarded a point for each item purchased like other reward programs do such as PinkBerry. Instead they turned the program into a sham hardly worth participating in. Irony is I no longer feel compelled to go to SB now so I get a point b/c the points are kinda worthless now. Reminds me of the pre-WWII cartoon of the German man with a wheelbarrow of currency that amounted to a loaf of bread.
You act like the program wasn't to SB's benefit in the first place and it was just being nice. Are you so naive?
But again, SB could easily have amended the rules to one point for each item in a transaction like other food chains offer. That is what customers were asking for all along. Problem solved. Instead they devalued the points to make it look like it was giving people more but the reality is it will cost us more to get a reward now.
Also what you call a "low cost" item is still a high profit one for SB. That $1.50 cake pop cost it all of .12 to make from start to finish. A $2 Tall coffee cost it $.15. These are not loss leader items people are buying to get a free higher price one. Everything at SB is premium priced.
I've seen countless claims online where people were buying a 50¢ chocolate on 30 transactions to get gold, then continuing for free drinks. This is abuse, and it is this type of abuse that prompted the change, though you will never hear them publicly admit it.
Obviously, loyalty programs are all designed to help the company. It is designed to draw you in more often. So what? If it also helps the customer save a little in return, is that a bad thing? Plus, it is still your choice to go or not. Why must the popular line be "companies are evil" and "they are trying to screw us" all the time? But that person buying 30 50¢ chocolates isn't abuse or trying to screw Starbucks?
This. Exactly. For people like me, who often spent more that $5 per visit? I won't be hurt. I will spend the same, and maybe be slightly ahead.
If you insisted that every item get rung up as a separate transaction? You're losing out, but you were abusing the system, you were costing the company money, as separate transactions do cost more than a single one, and take more time, causing longer lines for us all.
Where do you get this $150?? Source, please. I believe it is $62.50.
SO FALSE! The simple math that escapes you is that this will in no way hurt ALL customers, because most of us didn't ring every item up separately because we aren't jerks trying to game a system, and making the line take longer.
But if I bought a $3.00 cup of coffee every day, and then once every three weeks to a month I bought a $13 pound of coffee I would often find myself giving them $46 for that same reward. Not as good a deal. So I would split up that pound of coffee and cup of coffee into two different purchases. Which again, I felt was fair.
But it was annoying, and I told them that. I told them that they should make it a per item star system, and not a per purchase. Instead of doing that they made it based on dollars, which effectively doubled the amount I needed to spend to get my free coffee. So instead of getting a little less than a 10% discount I would now get a little less than a 5% discount.
All well and fine, and if that's the way they want to run their rewards program it's their prerogative, so they can fashion it any way they see fit. But they should be prepared to lose loyalty. They've lost mine. Now, instead of stopping on my way into the office every morning to buy that $3.00 Americano I will just walk right past their door up to my office and have a cup of the free coffee in the office. Or walk across the street and give my money to Peet's.