A loyalty program is less about points and rewards and while these perks might attract consumers, they don’t suggest a sense of loyalty. In this age of data, the focus of these programs should be collection of useful data to help maintain good relations which benefit both consumers and the brand. However a business that trusts consumer-provided data is a business making decisions based on what is untrustworthy, random information. From observation of customer activities and external data sources, advanced analytics can create a profile of the customer for precise segmentation of the customer base. Business analysts and data scientists agree that expanding the data for any given model will typically produce dramatic improvements in analysis. That’s why many organizations have turned to a Big Data solution. Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/davemendle/323701/redefining-loyalty-programs-big-data-hadoop