A second strategic move behind the program's revamp is the decision to push for what, in more marketing parlance, is known as 'customer ownership'. At present, frequent flyers who use credit cards to accelerate their points accumulation do so in two sublty different ways: via a program where points are carried by a non-Qantas company or via a program where points convert directly to Qantas Frequent Flyer points. Called 'indirect sweep' and 'direct sweep' programs, the difference is that in the first case, the card issuer, say American Express, controls the points and the financial value of those points - and the customer relationship. In the second, it is Qantas.
Eliminating all the indirect sweep programs from the new scheme is almost as radical as hiving the Frequent Flyer program off into a separate company. While frequent flyers could simply ignore the chance to buy shares in their program, they will have to decide whether they want to direct all their spending to the Qantas Frequent Flyer program or not.
... Qantas is effectively calling on it frequent flyers to commit to the airline rather than another card loyalty scheme that had offered Qantas flights as one in a range of rewards.....
