Lululemon

Elevating lululemon’s Membership Program with Behavioral Science and Customer Intelligence

lululemon is one of the strongest and most recognized brands in athleisure, and that strength has translated into a deeply loyal customer base around the world. lululemon Membership, its loyalty program, represented an untapped opportunity to transcend customers’ love of the overall brand and create stronger, more personal connections within the program itself — allowing it to uniquely embody and express what it means to be part of the lululemon community.

Seeking to go beyond typical perks and build more meaningful connections with members, lululemon partnered with Material to dig deep into what its customers truly value to identify, prioritize and roadmap steps to evolve the loyalty program.

WHAT WE DID

Customer Insights

Behavioral Science Consulting

Loyalty

Approach

Our team engaged existing and prospective lululemon customers to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for innovation and expansion of its loyalty program to align with human needs and behavior. Leveraging behavioral science principles, we assessed the relative importance of rational and emotional drivers behind loyalty program engagement. Though customers say they want financial benefits, we learned that the biggest drivers of engagement are features that help members feel inspired and motivated to reach their true potential.

We also redefined “high-value” lululemon customer segments — identifying members who love lululemon specifically and aren’t just big spenders everywhere — using Implicit Identity Mapping (IIM) and incorporating brand affinity measures in addition to spend metrics.

Synthesizing these insights into an actionable strategy, we highlighted opportunities for lululemon to offer an additional tier of exclusive benefits to significantly improve the program’s reach and engagement among high-value customers. These opportunities informed strategic recommendations for a revised two-year program roadmap.

Outcomes

Our insights revealed that lululemon Membership must deliver the rational features that are top of mind for consumers while also tapping into the more implicit, emotional drivers of engagement. These hidden motivators — feeling connected, recognized, an insider, inspired and supported — deepen customer connections with the brand while setting lululemon Membership apart as a dynamic, inclusive and valuable customer community.

This grounding in its customers’ human needs, behaviors and motivations has provided a foundation for lululemon Membership to deliver the benefits customers value and that help them reach their full potential — while driving increased engagement and bottom-line results for the business.