Marketing

McDonald's stock offers boost spend 120%, study says

Photo: iStock.

March 31, 2021

It might be wise for restaurateurs to put stock in … well … stock. That's according to a two-year study run by fractional stock reward company, Bumped, to see what happens when McDonald's customers become owners of the brand through MCD stock rewards, a news release said.

Specifically, the organization learned that when customers were gifted a $5 stock reward in McDonald's to get started, they had a 120% increase in spend, even a full year later. Bumped, based in Portland, Oregon, promotes the use of stock as incentives for retail customers to purchase products, .

After the initial $5, Bumped users were rewarded 3% of their spend in fractional shares of stock for their spending with McDonald's — growing their ownership in the QSR. Bumped found customers visited the chain more often and spent an average $12.37 more monthly.

"After a 15-year career in the loyalty and incentives space, I'm unaware of any reward initiative that has resulted in this level of consumer excitement, awareness, and behavior change," David Nelsen, founder, CEO of Bumped said in the release. "Even a year later, these consumers were spending more than double what they were before becoming owners — a significant statement on lifetime value."

Over its two-year timeframe, the Bumped pilot rewarded over 13,000 U.S. consumers in fractional stock rewards when they spent at more than 80 brands. Users chose their favorite brand in each category, then received stock rewards in the brand. The findings of the holistic Bumped pilot were researched and reported on by The Columbia School of Business, which recently released its independent study on the initiative.

"Our study is the first to show a very clean, causal link between stock ownership and consumption," Michaela Pagel, the Roderick H. Cushman associate professor of Business at Columbia Business School, said in a report on the study. "It's not only that loyalty matters in people's investment decisions, but we show one step further that loyalty actually affects consumption of the very brands people are investing in."