Online shopping rewards
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Online shopping rewards portals are a type of reward website, with some also offering rewards for other actions, usually including registering with the website.
The advent of online shopping has resulted in the development of a large number of rewards programs that offer rewards for shopping through specific shopping portals. These rewards can be points-based (allowing redemption for various prizes), cashback, airline frequent flyer-miles-based, hotel points, or even donations to charity.
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[edit] History
Rewards portals exist in most major markets, most notably in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia. The original loyalty program was started in 1896 by Sperry & Hutchinson called Green Stamps which has been digitized into the new S&H greenpoints.com. In the early 1900s, Carlson Marketing owned a company called Gold Stamps and that has similarly been rebranded as GoldPoints.com. One of the most successful programs that currently exist is called AirMiles out of Canada and, like the old Green/Gold Stamps programs, it includes everyday spending in supermarkets. 1997 saw the launch of the DHS Club where members can collect rewards when shopping online and offline around the world.
[edit] Types of online Shopping rewards
[edit] Points rewards
It is important to remember that, with the exception of cashback rewards, each rewards program values its points differently: before consumers purchase through one of the point- or mile-based programs, they should compare the points they will earn with the specific reward they choose. In addition, because of the highly competitive nature of online commerce, many of the shopping portals offer coupons or discount offers not available if purchases are made directly through the merchant site: besides receiving points towards a reward, consumers can also save money up front.
[edit] Cashback websites
To explain how cashback websites operate, you must be able to comprehend the idea that when someone clicks a link on the Internet from one website to another it is very easy to track where that click originated from. Millions of websites use this to their advantage by joining Affiliate programmes. For example, take a football fan website. As they are going to be getting visitors interested in football, there is a chance they might also be interested in gambling. Therefore that website owner might decide to place a banner for an online bookmaker on their football fan website. Then every time a visitor clicks that banner and then goes on to become a paying customer at the bookmaker website, the football fan website owner will receive a commission - maybe 20%, for example. What the cashback websites do is they gain commission for directing people to buy products/services via their website, and they might offer a high percentage of this commission back to the customers, say 80% for example thus keeping 20% of the commission money to themselves.
[edit] Donating to charity
Many rewards websites give users the chance to donate any money you get back to charity. In order to encourage participation this is usually in addition to also offering cashback. This will allow cashback website users the ability to donate to charity whilst carrying out their usual shopping online without any additional cost to themselves. However, many of these websites, unlike the charities that they give to, do not operate as not-for-profit websites.
