• by Aaron Baar , July 14, 2010

Chase Card Services and InterContinental Hotels Group took the adage "Give the people what they want," to heart when it came to creating their new Priority Club Select Visa Card, using a private social community of users to determine the features that would appeal to their customer base.

In a year-long process, the companies enlisted Communispace, a market research company that builds customized online communities for customer feedback, to build a pre-screened community of approximately 300 members of IHG's Priority Club Rewards loyalty program, where they could engage in direct and ongoing conversations throughout the product development process.

"We worked with [the companies] to understand that the best way to be competitive was to learn directly from the cardholders on a continuous basis," Corey Schwartz, Communispace's director of client services, tells Marketing Daily. "By understanding the benefits they were seeking, we were able to continually build on the feedback. We have essentially co-created a card with our customers."

As a result, the card offers benefits and services that the companies believe will have a stronger appeal to Priority Club members than previous or competitive programs, Schwartz says. Among the benefits determined by the community: an annual free hotel night certificate, no transaction fees on foreign purchases and no annual fee for the first year.

"Our goal was to create a card that delivers the strongest possible value to Priority Club members," said Tony Glover, senior vice president, Chase Card Services, in a statement. "Customers are our best resource, so we listened to them. Their candid feedback helped solidify and prioritize features and benefits."

Using the community model, the company was also able to extend perks beyond travel to offer greater rewards on purchases that fit within Priority Club members, such as two-points for every one dollar spent on gas, grocery and dining purchases. "Instead of taking it from a [purely] hotel perspective, they were trying to understand their customers' lifestyle needs," Schwartz says.