A recent survey conducted by COLLOQUY, a loyalty program research group, found that Canadians are far more likely to identify themselves as participants in loyalty programs — roughly 86 percent compared to 57 percent of U.S. residents. Furthermore, approximately 75 percent of Canadian consumers actively participate in loyalty programs vs. 39.5 percent in the United States.

Canadians are more generous. With the exception of young adults, they’re about twice as likely as U.S. consumers to redeem an award for someone other than themselves.

General adult Canadian redeemers said they burned their points an average of one time in the past year for credit card and other financial services programs and an average of less than once for travel programs — considerably below redemption averages reported for U.S. consumers.

It should be noted that the Canadian market has a strong Air Miles presence, a coalition program between quite a few national retailers, companies and financial institutions. The U.S. has a much more fragmented loyalty market. Bloomberg quotes Aeroplan’s CEO, Rupert Duchesne, “If you take out frequent flyer programs, the U.S. is the least-sophisticated loyalty market in the top 20 global economies.”