If your offering is always better, you don't have loyal customers, you have smart ones. Don't brag about how loyal your customers are when you're the cheapest or you have clearly dominated some key element of what the market demands. That's not loyalty. That's something else.
Loyal customers understand that there's almost always something better out there, but they're not so interested in looking.
Rewarding loyalty for loyalty's sake--not by paying people for sticking it out so the offering ends up being more attractive--is not an obvious path, but it's a worthwhile one. Tell a story that appeals to loyalists. Treat different customers differently, and reserve your highest level of respect for those that stand by you.
The majority of businesses reward new customers while essentially the gouging the ones that come week after week. How does that action or the perception play out? Not well.
