With private fitting rooms, members-only stores and clever apps, US department stores are reinventing their old and tested loyalty programs to fend off the challenge from e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc and other online rivals.

Over the past two years, major US retailers, including Macy's, Nordstrom, Kohls Corp and others, have spent billions of dollars to overhaul existing programmes or launch new loyalty schemes. According to estimates compiled by market intelligence firm Beroe, the US loyalty programme market was worth between US$47bil (RM196.01bil) and US$55bil (RM229.37bil) in 2018 in terms of spending by companies and sector analysts expect it to keep growing by 2% to 4% a year between 2018-2020.