Customer Loyalty & Its Big Reward

There are so many people out there who're active in the food supplements "direct-selling" business. If one were to consider the supposedly good points in each product, he is apt to end up buying all those products—there is in fact no need to have a regular meal—might as well consume the food supplements as the regular meals, and treat the regular meals as the supplements! Therefore, I don't normally buy "food supplements". 

However, because of my active lifestyle, I do consume some vitamins which I'm convinced may be beneficial for my body. For example, I take glucosamine and B-complex. I'm not sure if they're really of much use to my body, but I don't mind to consume them on a daily basis.

Anyway, this post is not really about food supplements; certainly, I have no intention to promote anything here in this post. I just want to share a little bit about customer loyalty and its big reward. 

You see, I've been a loyal customer of Abbott for some years now. Never mind which product and why I've been consuming it. I usually buy the product from a pharmacy near my office. And each time I buy the product, I'd fill up a form with my name, address etc. Apparently, I get to earn some sort of points from each purchase, and that can accumulate over time. When I've accumulated enough points, then I'm entitled to get a "free" product from the company.

Well, I've never really hoped for any reward for being a loyal customer, but then again if I can get something out of those so-called accumulated points, why not?

Today a big parcel arrived through a courier service at my office. Gave me quite a surprise it did. It was from Abbott. Some of the office folks were fairly excited just looking at the size of the box. 

Curiosity mounted, everyone was eager to know what's the content. Quite honestly, I was curious too. Usually, I would open deliveries such as this at home. But today, I couldn't contain my excitement—I just had to open the box there and then.

I went to the room where we keep all the site plans and started opening the box, all the time wondering what has gotten into those folks at Abbott. I mean, have they all gone crazy and suddenly became so generous?

Opening the top, there were clear plastic bags filled with air in them; I mean, seriously, just air. I then worked my way through those plastic bags, removing them one by one, until the box was almost empty.

But as I was taking out the plastic one by one, it began to strike me that this might be a hoax! And then the anti-climax—voila! right there at the bottom of that huge box, was one small box of the "free" product!

The feeling was akin to what Christopher Columbus must have felt when he found the New World after a long and dangerous journey across the Atlantic Ocean. But after several hours turning the matter in my mind, I still can't figure out what's the idea with that monster of a box to contain that small product. I'm really curious to know what's the explanation for that!