A Dairy Queen in the Indianapolis area is testing a loyalty program that uses stickers to attach radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to phone handsets delivering savings coupons to consumers. If successful, Dairy Queen intends to expand the test and eventually take the program national.
According to RFID Journal, Dairy Queen has been testing the program for 20 months. Shoppers sign up for the program by dialing into the restaurant's system. They then receive a text message from Dairy Queen with a special promotion offer. The customer then simply goes to a store and shows the text message to an employee to get their special deal.
A total of 900 people have joined the Dairy Queen program and only about six percent cancel.
Jamie Guse, International Dairy Queen's web site manager who is overseeing the test, said the RFID portion has only been tested for a couple of weeks but the company has high expectations.
"This allows us to do real-time tracking on redemptions, and closes the gap as to how well the text-messaging system is working," he told RFID Journal. "Our goal is to get a better understanding of customer behavior, and build customer loyalty based on that information."
The RFID system also enables the restaurants to target messages to individual customers based on their purchasing habits.
Discussion Questions: Is Dairy Queen's RFID-powered loyalty program going to move the mark on attracting new customers and/or increasing purchasing frequency/rings, etc.? What opportunities and challenges do you see associated with the use of RFID in this particular program?