Case Article—The RealPro Customer Benefits Program: Rekindling Shopper Loyalty Through a Subscription Service

Arnd Huchzermeier (), Jannik Wolters () and Marcel Uphues ()
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Arnd Huchzermeier: WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, 56179 Vallendar, Germany
Jannik Wolters: WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, 56179 Vallendar, Germany
Marcel Uphues: 40239 Düsseldorf, Germany

INFORMS Transactions on Education, 2023, vol. 24, issue 1, 17-21

Abstract: In this case study, students combine data-based insights with strategic considerations to make fundamental business decisions at the German grocery retail chain Real. In response to dwindling numbers of customers and reduced revenues, Real developed the RealPro customer benefits program to achieve a quick turnaround. For a fixed annual fee, RealPro members receive substantial and permanent discounts of 20% on nonpromoted items from a broad range of food categories. Students employ data analytics methods to extract insights from the provided data set, which contains point-of-sale information from the actual market test of RealPro. Based on these insights, decisions concerning the rollout and design of the RealPro program must be made. We provide data analysis solutions in both Excel and R to analyze 75 thousand customer transactions. In the case extension, students can apply the difference-in-differences method and two covariate balancing algorithms for in-depth statistical analyses. For this purpose, we provide an additional unbalanced data set with 83 thousand transactions, on which the students can test and analyze propensity score matching and entropy balancing models.

Keywords: subscription program; customer loyalty; grocery retailing; covariate balancing; difference-in-differences analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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