In the last year, I’ve spent more than $1050 at Australian beauty retailer Mecca.

During this time, I’ve bought gifts for friends, paid for in-store make-up applications and bought myself products: from a wild Brooklyn lavender candle to a restock of my favourite Nars mascara and Go-To sheet masks from my dad who didn’t know what to buy me for my birthday.

As many customers would agree, shopping at Mecca isn’t just about the products.Credit:Kirsten Burghard

By any measure, this is a significant amount of money to spend on beauty products. However, as many customers would agree, shopping at Mecca isn’t just about the products: it’s also about the free samples.

Each quarter, Mecca rewards its most loyal customers – its Beauty Loop members – with boxes of free samples. The size and cult status of the samples correlates to how much you spend at the retailer. I recently hit Level 2, excitedly texting a friend after I’d passed the threshold, as if I’d won some kind of prize – and not simply made the decision to spend hundreds of dollars on skincare.

In my most recent Beauty Loop box, I received a sachet of internet-famous Glow Recipe Dew Drops, a small tube of a Kylie Beauty serum, a sample of Ellia Brooklyn’s $157 Bee eau de parfum, and one pair of Patchology night eye gels. I was happy with the haul, albeit jealous of other Level 2 members who I knew had received bigger and arguably better samples.

Before every Beauty Loop drop, Mecca Chit Chat – a brand-operated Facebook group with more than 76,500 members – comes alive. Posts about free samples can garner hundreds of comments from customers comparing, celebrating, and, at times, complaining. But it’s not just Mecca turning the loyalty of their customers into an active community – and subsequent profits.

Inside an award-winning loyalty program

Mecca recently won Best Loyalty Program at the Power Retail awards. Here’s what it looks like:

• Level 1: Spend $300–$600 per year and get quarterly Beauty Loop boxes filled with free samples
• Level 2: Spend $600–$1200 per year and get Beauty Loop boxes, plus a birthday gift and other exclusive benefits
• Level 3: Spend $1200 and get Beauty Loop boxes, birthday gifts, a free makeup application and more

In Australia, Sephora has a three-tiered loyalty system, Beauty Pass, which offers welcome gifts, birthday gifts and more.

Adore Beauty, Australia’s leading online beauty store, invites customers to join the Adore Society, a “loyalty program that rewards you for being you”. Like its competitors, it has three tiers, the highest of which is reserved for customers spending more than $1500 annually.

But despite my penchant for high-end beauty products and the similarities between loyalty programs, I haven’t made a single purchase at Sephora or Adore Beauty in the past year.

According to Dr Sonika Singh, a researcher at University of Technology Sydney with expertise in retailing and digital marketing, that’s exactly what these brands want.

“The loyalty of customers is a very important part of a brand’s retention strategy” says Singh.

Tiered programs that enable members to compare themselves to other customers also help.

“There’s a theory called the social comparison theory, which says that we as humans tend to assess ourselves by comparing ourselves with others. And loyalty programs help you do exactly that,” says Singh.

But what else is there to learn from our collective obsession with loyalty programs?

A high-quality experience

When choosing to buy from a high-end retailer, we’re buying into the quality we expect from the products as well as the shopping experience itself.

“Freebies are part of service quality – and consumers like to shop at stores that provide them with that,” says Dr Melissa Norberg, deputy director for the Centre for Emotional Health and national president of the Australian Association of Cognitive and Behaviour Therapy.

Along with the feeling of getting something (free samples) for nothing (after spending hundreds of dollars) the key to the success of loyalty programs is the sense of community they create, like that inside the Mecca Chit Chat group.

“It’s been found that if consumers have emotional engagement with the brand, they’re 82 per cent more likely to buy that brand,” says Singh. “So, when brands create these communities, they’re tapping into that psychology.”

One less decision

When it comes to beauty, there’s a huge amount of competition. Shoppers aren’t just choosing between high-end retailers – they could also be shopping at supermarkets, pharmacies or buying direct from brands.

“In the beauty industry, exclusivity and status are becoming more and more important because there’s so much brand clutter,” says Singh. “And because there’s so much choice available, it’s overwhelming for consumers to make decisions.”

As customers like myself find themselves climbing the levels of loyalty programs, there’s more reason to keep spending – and hit the next tier – and less reason to shop elsewhere.

But why free samples?

Of course, free samples have a practical function, allowing customers to try new items without buying. But there’s more to their appeal than that.

“The free product is perceived as an instant reward, and people are drawn to immediate gratification,” says Norberg, who is hosting an upcoming Vivid Sydney talk, Too Much Stuff? Discover the Science of Letting Go. “The problem is we might start to desire those freebies more than the products we initially wanted.”

But from the perspective of retailers – and many loyal customers – free samples are worth the commitment.

“Customers love the magic of the program, that genuine moment of surprise in opening a Beauty Loop box or bonus and that journey to find a new favourite product,” says Lauren Shepherd, Mecca’s head of loyalty. “Even after 10 years, our Beauty Loop loyalty program continues to delight customers with imaginative and relevant rewards.”

And I can’t help but agree. Despite knowing what I do about consumerism – particularly within the beauty industry – I can’t help but wonder what’s going to be in my next Beauty Loop box, which I will inevitably race to pick up, along with a full-size bottle of those Glow Recipe watermelon drops.

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