The Loyalty Program for Our Self-Esteem: The Role of Collective Self-Esteem in Luxury Hotel Membership Programs

This research explores the social mechanism of luxury hotel membership programs and extends current loyalty program literature that has mainly examined membership programs from a mental-accounting perspective. By building upon the social identity theory, this study posits that luxury hotel membership programs provide social platforms, allowing members to construct a collective identity and collective self-esteem. Consequently, collective self-esteem is proposed as an antecedent of customer–brand relationship constructs, such as commitment, switching resistance, and word of mouth. Members from two South Korean luxury hotel membership programs were recruited to participate in a survey to test these constructs’ relationship, and findings demonstrate that membership programs’ effectiveness in cultivating a robust customer–brand relationship is contingent upon members’ collective self-esteem with the program. This correlation involves the four dimensions of collective self-esteem: membership esteem, private esteem, public esteem, and importance to identity. This study is preeminent to the current literature by identifying a critical psychological mechanism, which luxury hotel brand managers can leverage to successfully launch a membership program that ultimately cultivates enduring customer–brand relationships. The results of this study also suggest several managerial implications for hotel marketers to effectively design and manage membership programs by considering collective self-esteem’s four dimensions.