Matilda Dorotic

Who they are

This page records the public professional record only. Nothing adverse is recorded and no motive is attributed.

Her affiliation and wider career were not verified for this page, so none is asserted here. What can be said is what the paper did. It studied what happens when loyalty members choose how much to redeem and when, rather than facing a fixed threshold or an expiry date.

Key papers

Dorotic, M., Verhoef, P. C., Fok, D., & Bijmolt, T. H. A. (2014), 'Reward redemption effects in a loyalty program when customers choose how much and when to redeem', International Journal of Research in Marketing, 31(4), 339-355, doi:10.1016/j.ijresmar.2014.06.001. Read from a summary of the paper and its published abstract.

Her wider publication record was not surveyed for this page.

Key ideas

The paper analysed weekly data on three thousand and ninety-four members of a nationwide Dutch coalition programme over one hundred and eighty-four weeks. Redeeming, even a small fraction of a balance, raised purchases before and after, a pattern the authors call redemption momentum and offer as an alternative to explanations based on the pull of a nearing reward.

About seventy per cent of redemption decisions were made before that week's purchase, and members redeemed about a quarter of their balance on average. The sample was made up of members with at least one redemption, so it cannot speak to members who never redeem.

What the sample was

The sample was built to answer a specific question. Every member had made at least 30 purchases and had redeemed at least once, because the paper asks what happens around a redemption when members choose how much to redeem and when. The programme was a coalition: members earned points at more than ten partners across sectors that included grocery, fuel, insurance and travel, which makes it a different object from the single-retailer programme in Stourm's study.

How the effect varied

The rise in purchasing before and after a redemption was not the same for everyone. It was weaker among longer-standing and higher-income members and stronger among older ones, and it faded over the weeks that followed. The abstract also reports an association with the number of direct mailings received.

What this site takes from it

The article on why loyalty points sit unspent uses the paper as the observation pointing the other way from a firm's fear that redemption costs it a customer, and states the caveat that matters most: the sample held only members who redeemed, so it says nothing about the customers who never do. Her wider publication record was not surveyed for this page.

What the abstract adds about expiry

The published abstract describes a programme with no point expiry and no required redemption timing, and says the decision to redeem alone raises purchases before and after. That matters because it offers an explanation for purchasing before a reward that does not depend on pressure from expiring points. Past purchases also make members more likely to redeem, so the arrow runs both ways. The authors conclude that firms wanting to raise purchasing should avoid point expiry and binding redemption thresholds.

That conclusion concerns buying, not the share of points redeemed. A reader weighing it against the gift-card deadline study should keep the two outcomes apart, since a lapsing balance may lift redemption while the authors' evidence is about what redemption does to later purchasing. This page reports the paper's own words on the first and makes no claim about the second.

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