The Challenge

The leadership team at the Chicos/WHBM/Soma brand family wanted to design a new rewards program based on customer insights. Their goal was to better engage their customer base, and differentiate themselves from competition.

Our team set out to deeply understand the unique shoppers at each of the 3 brands, and design a program that would:

1. Build loyalty within the customer base for each brand

2. Encourage cross-brand shopping and loyalty

The Result

The new programs for all three brands were launched this summer, based on the insights and recommendations that my team and I delivered. To read more about this launch, see this press release.

The brands’ CEO, Molly Langenstein, captured it well: "The new Programs offer curated benefit suites matched to spend, that deliver industry-leading value with more meaningful ways to reward her every time she shops with us; two things that are important to our customers now more than ever."

My Role & Impact

I partnered with another strategist, on the discovery strategy and process, while working with a team of analysts, business subject matter experts, and a loyalty expert.

I designed a research plan that would help us understand our 3 shopper segments (Chicos, WHBM, and Soma shoppers) in a post-pandemic world. Together, my co-strategist and I conducted empathy interviews and synthesized insights. We found that although the shopper segments were far apart in age and shopping habits, they had far more similarities than expected. For example, they all valued birthday rewards, money-saving promotions, and needed the loyalty program to be more clearly communicated. However, it was essential to design unique programs for each shopper type that fit their shopping habits/frequency and brand perception/lifestyle fit.

Equipped these insights, we embarked on the difficult journey of designing programs that felt personal to each shopper type, but were operationally and technically feasible - and aligned to business priorities. We navigated these challenges by designing custom workshops to help the team weigh tradeoffs, and conducting metrics-driven concept tests with shoppers.

I played a key role in extracting deep truths from shoppers, and helping our team keep “the reality” of shoppers’ likelihood-to-engage front and center. I clearly articulated the insight that what shoppers truly wanted was an experience that was as simple, and filled with personal choice, as possible. This helped us have a realistic view of what incentives we should focus on - ones which could truly motivate shoppers to engage with, and develop loyalty for, the brand.