Are customers committed to your brand, or would leaving be too much effort? Insights from Raja Rajamannar, Mastercard Senior Fellow and Former CMCO, challenge what repeat purchases tell us about loyalty and where global businesses should invest to give customers a reason to stay.
Some customers love your brand. Others would leave if it didn’t mean moving their data or learning another system. They keep buying, so it is easy to mistake the inconvenience of leaving for loyalty.
You could be spending a fortune on rewards for customers who stay because switching is a hassle. The question is whether they would still choose you if a competitor removed that friction.
Staying together for the convenience
Raja Rajamannar, Mastercard Senior Fellow and Former CMCO, draws a line that should concern any leader relying on repeat purchase as a proxy for brand health as he explains on the In Other Words podcast.
“You create an ecosystem, which makes it very difficult to get out of. For example, if you look at the Apple ecosystem, once you’re in Apple, the experience is fantastic. The products are great. But then, even if you find a superior Android or some other solution, the barriers to exit are so high, it’s too much of work. And that inertia puts you back where you are.”
He applies the same logic to his own behavior. “So, I live in Cincinnati. And if I want to go to Paris, there is only one airline that takes me from here to Paris, and that is Air France, Air France-Delta combination.” He attributes that choice to the direct connection.
“But then that is not necessarily a decision coming out of my loyalty to Air France. It’s coming out of the convenience that Air France gives me on that particular sector.”
A customer can be perfectly happy with the arrangement without feeling much attachment to the brand. The airline has the right route. The software works with everything they already use. Those are valuable reasons to stay, but a competitor can challenge them. Counting each repeat purchase as loyalty tells the executive team very little about how the customer would respond.
The risk is paying to maintain a relationship without understanding why it continues. Rewards may go to customers who were going to buy anyway, while improvements to the service struggle for funding. As long as customers keep returning, it is easy to put off asking whether they would still choose you.
More than half of the marketing budget among loyalty program owners surveyed goes toward loyalty and CRM, according to the Antavo Global Customer Loyalty Report 2026. Yet 31.6% have difficulty identifying which purchases happened because of their program.
Starting a relationship from scratch
In a new market, you have no shared history to rely on. Customers have yet to build their routines around your product, and buying from someone else requires no breakup at all. The reasons that keep customers with you at home may do little to win over someone meeting the brand for the first time.
The Global Content Disconnect researchsurveyed 550 business leaders across nine countries and found that 89% of enterprises plan to expand into new markets within five years, yet only 9% can enter one quickly. Half have already lost revenue because of disconnected customer experiences. Customers in those markets are forming their first impressions. If the experience feels like an afterthought, an invitation to join a loyalty program asks for commitment before the business has given them much reason to consider it.
Freddie Braun, whose experience spans Monzo, Klarna, Net-A-Porter, and Condé Nast, captures the gap between accuracy and belonging.
They can spot when something has been tacked on and hasn’t specifically been created with them in mind.”
His argument is that when content feels borrowed, audiences disengage, regardless of how accurate the language is. Customers need to feel comfortable using the product and confident that it was designed with their needs in mind.
The problem can begin well before customers see the content. In my recent article on customer experience and international expansion, I drew on insights from our live panel with leaders from AWS, Monzo, Phrase and The Culture Factor Group. Janet Romero highlights how international teams often join the process after the main decisions have been made.
“If a piece of content doesn’t resonate with me, there’s no reaction. Which is worse than a negative reaction for a brand.”
They inherit an experience shaped around the home market and are asked to make it work elsewhere. Changing the language can only go so far when customers had little influence on the experience in the first place.
Llibert Argerich, CMO at Thumbtack and former marketing leader at eBay and Udemy, captured the dynamic in a different context. Customers care less about the platform’s nationwide scale than whether it can solve their immediate problem.
“You care that we have the one pro who can come to your home at the time you need and do a good job.”
Meeting that specific, local need gives customers a reason to prefer a platform. That is as relevant to a global brand entering a new market as it is to a home services marketplace.
Give them a reason to choose you again
Raja proposes a term he believes better describes what most companies are managing.
“So, there are so many reasons why repeat purchases or repeat uses happen. And we need to understand what is the right mechanism for you to stick with my brand. So, I call it preference management.”
Preference leaves room for customers to reconsider. They can choose you today and someone else tomorrow, without feeling that they have betrayed a relationship. For leadership teams, the job is to understand what earns that choice in each market and keep investing in it.
Trust gives customers a reason to stay even when leaving becomes easier. Raja argues that people are struggling to know what to believe, with AI-generated content adding to that uncertainty. Customers have a reason to hesitate over a competing offer when they already trust you to deliver.
“And the trust is earned,” he says. “It is not declared.” For a business, that means being transparent about mistakes and keeping the promises customers relied on when they signed up. Across markets, it means making sure customers can understand those promises and receive the service they were led to expect.
A rewards program can give customers a reason to return. So can a service that is easier to use or support that resolves a problem in their own language. Those improvements deserve consideration alongside the next incentive.
A premium sportswear brand working with Phrase saw the commercial impact of giving customers an experience in their own language. Within six months of launching a local-language website, sales in that market increased by 1,400%. The company also reported higher engagement and purchase rates for German-language content than for English-language content.
Before renewing the loyalty budget, ask what customers would miss if they left. If the strongest answer is that moving would be a nuisance, the business has work to do. Customers who trust you to keep your promises have something more to weigh against a competing offer. Invest in the experience that earns that confidence, in every market where you expect them to stay.
Watch the full conversation
Raja Rajamannar, Mastercard Senior Fellow and Former CMCO, helped take Mastercard from 87th to 12th among the world’s most valuable brands during his tenure, while cutting advertising spending by more than 70%.
He explains the decisions behind that transformation and how brands compete when customers delegate discovery and purchasing to AI agents.
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