Maritz is a sales and marketing services company that designs and operates employee recognition and reward programs, sales channel incentive programs, (including incentive travel rewards^[2]) and customer loyalty programs.^[3] It also plans corporate & association trade shows, meetings and events, and offers a customer experience technology platform.^[4]

Subsidiaries and segments include Maritz Motivation, Maritz Global Events, Maritz Automotive, Quality Reward Travel, and Impact Dimensions.^[5]

History

In 1894, Edward Maritz started the E. Maritz Jewelry Manufacturing Company, a wholesaler and manufacturer of fine jewelry and engraved watches.^[6] By the 1920s, the company was concentrating on wholesaling imported watches and became one of the first in the nation to sell wristwatches.^[6] When the stock market crashed in 1929, the company nearly failed. The crisis forced Maritz to look for a new direction, and it began to sell watches, jewelry and merchandise to large corporations as sales incentives and service awards for employees.^[6]

Over the next three decades, the sales incentive business flourished. Each year, Maritz produced an increasingly elaborate merchandise awards catalog and added services to promote and administer sales incentive programs.^[6] With the purchase of a small Detroit travel company in the 1950s, Maritz branched out again, adding group travel as an incentive award.^[6] As the 1960s ended, Maritz began to diversify with new divisions that laid the groundwork for ventures in communications, marketing research, training and meeting production.^[6]

The company further diversified in the 1970s. Maritz built communications and marketing research businesses, established a presence in Europe and opened a travel office in Mexico City.^[6]

In the 1990s Maritz invested in automotive marketing research. They formed Maritz Canada and added offices throughout Western Europe.^[6] During the late 1990s and into the new millennium, Maritz continued to grow in loyalty reward and incentive travel through strategic partnerships with companies such as American Express.^[6]

In 2008, Maritz claimed to be the largest source of integrated performance improvement, travel and market research^[7] services globally.^[6]

In May 2014, Maritz Canada and Maritz Loyalty Marketing rebranded to form North America's first brand loyalty agency, Bond Brand Loyalty.^[8] The focus of the new agency was to help clients manage customer-brand relationships. The company sold Bond Brand Loyalty in 2015.^[9] Also in 2014, Maritz Holdings acquired Allegiance Software in order to combine it with Maritz Research and create a new, standalone company, MaritzCX, a customer experience and market research company.

On March 3, 2020 MaritzCX was sold to InMoment.^[10]

References

Further reading

• McLaughlin, Laurianne (November 2007). Process Trip. CIO. pp. 65–68.
• Oracle (October 20, 2015). "OracleVoice: Maritz Brings Retail Bells And Whistles To Rewards Sites". Forbes. Retrieved June 25, 2016.
• Armstrong, M.; Brown, D.; Reilly, P. (2010). Evidence-Based Reward Management: Creating Measurable Business Impact from Your Pay and Reward Practices. Kogan Page. pp. 140–. ISBN 978-0-7494-5938-3. (subscription required)
• Brennan, Vince (December 10, 2015). "Hire Me! Job hunter takes unusual approach to job hunting at Maritz". St. Louis Business Journal. Retrieved June 25, 2016.
• "Merchandise Topics". The Billboard. October 1955. p. 103. Retrieved June 25, 2016.